TRADE CONFERENCE Bid To Oust S.A. And Portugal

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30401, 28 March 1964, Page 13

TRADE CONFERENCE Bid To Oust S.A. And Portugal

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

GENEVA, March 26.

The Afro-Asian group of delegations today asked that South Africa and Portugal be excluded from the United Nations Trade Conference and served notice that there would be no co-operation with them if they remained.

Mr K. B. Lail, an Indian delegate, made known the group’s views in a statement he read to the morning plenary session. He said that Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Yugoslavia were associated with the Afro-Asian group.

After accusing South Africa and Portugal of violating United Nations resolutions through their “inhuman” policies of apartheid and colonialism, Mr Lail said: “It is, in fact, our desire that these delegations be excluded from participation in this conference.”

Australia announced today that she would remove duties on bulk tea and cocoa and reduce the duty on packaged tea, at a cost of £A1,000,000 in revenue. The Australian Trade Minister (Mr McEwen) informed the conference of his Government’s decision in a detailed policy statement.

“We have no quantitative restrictions on any items of direct interest to developing countries,” he said. “Many imports of tropical products already enter Australia free of duty.” More than 70 per cent of Australian imports from developing countries, with 450 million dollars, entered duty-free. The Soviet Union today proposed a United Nations world trade organisation to help bridge the gap. between the rich and the poor countries. Mr Nikolai Patolichev, the Soviet Foreign Trade Minister, announced three ways in which the Soviet Union was prepared to help to stimulate the international trade of the developing countries. They were:— (1) The Soviet Union would increase its purchases from developing countries of primary products and manufactured and semimanufactured goods both through trade agreements and in repayment of credits granted by the

Soviet Union. (2) It was prepared to cooperate in specialisation and certain kinds of production by concluding long-term agreements

and contracts and giving technical assistance.

(3) It was prepared to promote the expansion of trade between the developing countries even at the cost of reducing its own exports to them of goods which they could

trade with one another.

A surprising proposal by India for major reconstruction of G.A.T.T. and a “no easy solution” warning from the UniteJ States, were features of yesterday’s session. The Indian proposal caused surprise since most underdeveloped countries are known to favour the creation

of an independent body to replace G.A.T.T. The Indian chief delegate, Mr Mantibhai Shah, made these three proposals for G.A.T.T.:—

(1) It must provide for trade between market economies and centrallyplanned economies. (2) All trading countries in the world should be fully represented. (3) Its policies must be radically modified and remodelled to provide full, free and expanding access for the products of less-developed countries in the markets of the industrialised ones.

G.A.T.T. had “worked well,” Mr Shah said, but it had “tended to provide a framework and policy forum . . . in which major trading nations of the world have derived greater benefit rather than provide an instrument of promoting the trade of the poorer countries. ...”

Mr Shah said a system of international commodity agreements should be devisad to provide for fair and remunerative prices for primary products. After the experience gained in agreements on tin, coffee and sugar, it

should not be difficult to work out others for commodities like wheat, rice, coffee, cocoa, copra, wool, sugar, vegetable oils, jute, spices, ores, rubber, and meat. Economic assistance should not be tied either to projects or countries, he said, as this failed to stimulate growth. Repayment should be worked out as far as possible in sales of goods rather than commercial rates of interest. Warning by U-S. The United States Undersecretary of State, Mr George Ball, warned delegates that there was no easy solution to the gap between affluent and underdeveloped countries. But the poorer ones could do more to help themselves, he said.

Delegates applauded Mr Ball only briefly. American officials acknowledged the statement had probably fallen far short of what many representatives of underdeveloped nations had hoped to hear; but they said Mr Ball had tried deliberately to bring the conference down to earth. He wanted delegates from the developing countries to know there were limits to what they could obtain in concessions from the rich nations.