STILL FUMBLING OVER A WTO HEAD CHOICE

8:35 AM Feb 21, 1995

STILL FUMBLING OVER A WTO HEAD CHOICE
Geneva 20 Feb (TWN) -- The Chairman of the General Council of the World Trade Organization, Amb. Kesavapani of Singapore, was due to meet with the US Representative to the GATT, Amb. Booth Gardner, Tuesday as part of his consultation process to choose a person to head the WTO.

Kesavapani who completed a round of consultations and a new head count of the WTO members and those eligible (the GATT 1947 members) last week, met Monday evening with the representatives of the EU, Korea and Mexico (who have candidates) and to convey to them his assessment of the support for each of the three.

Kesavapani is to convey this to an informal heads of delegations meeting on Wednesday or so. By then he would have heard from the Americans whether they would continue to back Salinas, or throw their weight behind either of the other two, or go for a new choice.

While no word of the actual head count was available, the general impression among delegations at the GATT headquarters Monday evening was that so far there has been no change in the backing for the three, with the EU's Renato Ruggiero leading with a comfortable majority of the contracting parties, but essentially of the EU and those states associated with it in Europe, and the ACP.

Among the remaining two, Salinas seems to be trailing slightly behind Korea's Kim, several Asian delegations suggested. But they refrained from any conclusions arising from this.

At the beginning of this new round, at an informal consultation of heads of delegations in the second week of February, there had been talk of not only coming out with the actual figures of the head-counts, but for eliminating the third candidate and/or seeking the second preferences of countries to enable a consensus to emerge.

Some of those who made the suggestion came from the Latin American and Caribbean region, leading others to believe that the suggestion was being made in the belief that Salinas was now edging ahead (after his visit in January to Geneva).

But a few of the same delegates were found privately commenting Monday that the process may not bring about a consensus, and that the elimination process might not be useful if there was no big difference between the second and third candidates.

There were suggestions also that no solution for a consensus choice would emerge from this process and the US and EU have to come to an agreement themselves.