U.N. draft falls short of Third World’s hopes

Press, 4 July 1983, Page 10

U.N. draft falls short of Third World’s hopes

NZPA-Reuter Belgrade

A United Nations economic conference ended with modest results yesterday after the United States dissociated itself from a final statement on world economic problems. “We find the text too negative, one sided and in places too ideological to be acceptable,” the American chief delegate, Gordon Streeb, told the closing session of the sixth United Nations conference on trade and development.

The United States also forced votes on two resolutions, on trade and compensatory financing for Third World countries’ shortfalls in commodity earnings. They were passed overwhelmingly with the United States the only negative voter.

After nearly a month of hard bargaining between Western industrial and developing nations, the conference adopted by consensus a series of compromise resolutions on aid, trade, finance, debt and commodities.

They contained no fresh spending commitments, which the West rejected,

and fell far short of developing nations' hopes for immediate measures to boost their economies as a vital part of world recovery from the recession.

■Explaining the American decision not to support the final statement, Mr Streeb said that Washington was convinced economic recovery was under way and could be built on.

The United States supported the efforts of the conference, the United Nations’ 20-year forum for negotiations on development, to shape shared views.

In late night haggling sessions, Western nations had resisted Third World drafts seeking a final statement calling for reforms in the Western-dominated international economic system, which developing countries blame for many of their problems.

The British Trade Minister, Mr Paul Channon, speaking also for West Germany and Japan, said that they reaffirmed the view of the world economy put forward by recent summit meetings, one of non-Com-munist/T; industrialised nations 1 at Williamsburg,

Virginia, and the other of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The three nations were encouraged that all delegations agreed, despite their differences, on the interdependence of their economies and on the special needs of the poorest countries.

The spokesman of the “Group of 77” Third World bargaining unit, Abdillahi Said Osman, of Somalia, said that the recession had shown “the inherent inadequacies, limitations and structural deficiencies of the institutional framework governing international economic relations.” , Western countries had not been willing at the conference to make any advances from previous positions and in some areas had refused to comply with existing undertakings. Voicing the group’s deep disappointment with the conference’s meagre results, Mr Osman said: “We have missed an historic opportunity to contribute meaningfully to world development and recovery.”

The conference ran three days over time to hamper out a package of resolutions

which Mr Osman said did not go much beyond those produced in the organisation’s earlier four-yearly meetings. They included a call for early ratification of a “common fund” to boost low commodity prices, approved by the conference in 1976. The conference agreed to set up an expert group on compensatory financing of shortfalls in commodity export earnings. It called on rich nations to redouble efforts to achieve the United Nations aid target of 0.7 per cent of gross national product by 1985, and also urged them to “respond in a positive manner” to requests from individual poor countries for debt relief. The United States went along with most of the conference resolution on trade, but forced votes on two brief, mild clauses dealing with trade in services.

As with its objection to the item on compensatory financing, the United States feels these issues should be tackled in other bodies, the International Monetary Fund or the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.