SUNS  4303 Friday 16 October 1998


KYRGYZ, LATVIA ACCESSION OKAYED

Geneva, 14 Oct (Chakravarthi Raghavan) -- The General Council of the World Trade Organization accepted the recommendations of its working parties and opened the way for the accession of Latvia, a Baltic state, and the Kyrgyz Republic, a former constituent of the Soviet Union and now a part of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

The two would need to have their accession protocols ratified by their respective parliaments and deposit it with the WTO before they become formally members of the WTO, which currently has 132
members.

Thirty countries are now in the process of negotiating their access - a process that is becoming protracted and prolonged - both in terms of the scrutiny of, and the modifications demanded in their
trade regimes in the areas of the WTO remit, as also completion of their bilateral market access negotiations with various members. The latter process is proving to be one based on hard-nosed
neo-mercantlist demands of the majors and trading partners.

The completion of the process for Kyrgyz republic has been the "swiftest" -- the working party on its accession was established in April 1996, and the report of the working party, chaired by Jean-Marie Metreger of France, was adopted in July 1998.

Since the dissolution of the former Soviet Union and the independence of the Kyrgyz republic, its trade shifted away from the CIS countries and towards China (48% by mid-1990s), and the European Union.

Latvia, the first Baltic State to have passed the accession hurdle, sought accession and had a GATT working party established in December 1993, and this was converted into a WTO working party in March 1995. The Working Party reported in September 1998.

The WTO Director-General Renato Ruggiero in statements when meeting with the ministers of the respective countries suggested that these accession should smoothen and accelerate the accession processes of other CIS and Baltic States.

In other discussions, the General Council has not been able to move forward in setting up the process that could lead to the election of a successor to Mr. Ruggiero. The only decision taken was that the four candidates in the race -- Thailand's Supachai Panitchpakdi, Morocco's Hassan Abouyoub, New Zealand's Mike Moore and Canada's Roy McLaren --should be invited to appear informally before the WTO membership to make any presentations on their candidacy and be prepared to answer questions form the membership.

The Chairman of the Council, Amb. Weekes of Canada, had originally envisaged naming a person or persons to conduct the consultations (since a Canadian is also one of the four candidates). But informal consultations on this have not produced a consensus: the members generally prefer the consultations to ascertain a consensus candidate be done by more than one person, preferably three, but seemed divided whether these consultations should be done by persons who are ambassadors and/or heads of delegations to the WTO, or other persons.

This may appear an arcane discussion and one of protocol, but several countries have become cautious on the consultation processes to produce a consensus (as happened in the choice of
Ruggiero himself, as well as of the Appellate Body and other key jobs) - with the person or persons conducting first getting the okay of the US, and then of the four Quad countries, and then
presenting it to the rest virtually on a take-it-or-leave it basis or challenging anyone to get up formally in the Council to deny a consensus.

Tied to the election of the next D.G. are issues as to the number of Deputy Directors-General for the organization, as well as senior positions and the need for a better reflection of the wider WTO
membership. On the latter, Pakistan wanted to separate the secretariat staffing issues from the election process of a successor, but Canada and others would appear to have not agreeable.
The Council also discussed, without reaching any conclusion, the proposals for "derestriction" of documents and their publication, to improve "transparency" of the WTO to the public.

The discussion was based on a joint US-Canadian paper.

One of the proposals in this is for the early publication of panel reports and rulings -- where the US and Canada have proposed that the findings and conclusions of a completed panel report should be prepared in all three official languages of the WTO, and made public and available to all the WTO members, along with it being conveyed (with the full report) to the parties to the dispute.

Presently, the parties to a dispute get the panel findings, and after an interval of 2-3 weeks, it is circulated to all the WTO members.

But the findings are leaked to the press by one or other side of a dispute, first when the interim report is made available to them for comments, and later when the full report is given to them, but
not to all members.

The US-Canadian proposal got the support of Indonesia, speaking for the ASEAN, which noted that this should put an end to the leakage of the findings to the media as now.

The US, Canada, the EC wanted the agenda of meetings to be public when circulated (as a draft to the members). This was supported by Jamaica. However, Indonesia, supported by a number of other developing countries, said that the draft agenda has to be approved by the members, before it is made public, as otherwise it could create confusion since a draft agenda could always be changed before adoption.

India according to WTO officials said that at the present moment, WTO had "more transparency" than other international organizations, in that 93% of the WTO documents of 1997 were already published, and the remaining were expected to be published soon when translations were completed. But the issue of publications relating to dispute panels had to be examined as part of the work of the Dispute Settlement Body in its review of the dispute settlement understanding.

Pakistan and Mexico supported this view, as also Japan which said there was a need for a balance between confidentiality and transparency.

Later, Indian and other Third World sources said that the issue at the Council related to the "publication" of documents and the WTO secretariat note that 93% of last year's documents had already been published.

The more substantive questions about "transparency" to civil society had come up at the informal consultations, when India and a number of countries said that the issue of "transparency" and
"civil society" were being raised and sought to be addressed from the perspective of some powerful countries and their attempts to "satisfy" their particular domestic constituencies.

It was for each country and government to take into confidence its civil society - whether of NGOs or business community and others -- in relation to the activities at the WTO, whether of negotiations
or others. The WTO was an organization of governments, and its activities could not be run from the perspective of satisfying the particular constituencies of some countries.

Consultations are to continue and the issue is to be taken up when the Council resumes its meeting.

In other matters, the European Community wanted a Ministerial meeting of trade and environment ministers next year, well before the 3rd Ministerial meeting, while Egypt wanted a high level
meeting on trade and development. A number of participants said that involving ministers would result in politicisation and there should instead be a high-level meeting. The EC said that while it
was agreeable to a high-level meeting, participation by ministers should not be ruled out. Any event, environment and other officials should be involved in the meeting, and not merely trade ministers.

No decisions were taken, and further consultations are to be held.