End to farm reform row thaw for G.A.T.T. talks

Press, 4 April 1989, Page 9

End to farm reform row thaw for G.A.T.T. talks

NZPA-Reuter Geneva The United States and the European Community have called a truce in their row over farm reforms, breaking a deadlock in world trade talks, E.C. officials said yesterday. Arthur Dunkel, director general of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (G.A.T.T.), has found a formula to get E.C. negotiators back to the table after G.A.T.T. talks stalled in Montreal last December, they said. “The question on which we spent the whole week in Montreal has been settled to the satisfaction of the Community,” an official said after consultations with Mr Dunkel ahead of a plenary session starting on April 5. December’s review of G.A.T.T. talks on setting trade patterns for the twenty-first century broke up after the United States and the E.C. disagreed on how far to cut subsidies for farm production and exports. Farm subsidies are blamed for boosting

production that depresses prices and distorts markets world wide. Mr Dunkel said in a text drawn up after talks with the United States and the E.C. that G.A.T.T. parties would strive for “progressive reductions in agricultural support and protection over an agreed period.” E.C. officials said they were unhappy because the word “elimination” still existed elsewhere in the text, but they hoped this could be resolved by redrafting. The United States Agriculture Secretary, Clayton Yeutter, has said he did not consider Mr Dunkel’s language to fall short of the United States goal of elimination — “If stating it in that manner makes it more palatable for some of our trading partners, that’s wonderful.” An E.C. official said that though negotiators had cleared the main obstacle, the details of a framework on farming still had to be hammered out.