
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, September 26, 1993                   TAG: 9403100011
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: D2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

GATT: A GO?

THE NORTH American Free Trade Agreement, for all its importance, is not as significant a measure for liberalizing international commerce as is the ongoing round of talks aimed at revising the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

This should help explain why it is crucial to ignore French farmers - and why it is good news that a way may have been found to do that.

French farmers have grown addicted to heavy government subsidies of their products, subsidies that have to be reduced as part of a general agreement reforming trade rules.

It would be outrageous, to say the least, if a few farmers were able to block successful conclusion of GATT negotiations on a wide range of issues covering almost every kind of commerce in goods and services. Yet that is what these farmers want desperately to do.

And they were succeeding, until last November. That's when the United States and European Community reached an agricultural-trade accord calling for a 21 percent cut in EC-subsidized farm exports over six years.

The agreement itself is minor in the global scheme of things, but French (and, to a lesser degree, German) intransigence on farm subsidies had threatened to derail the entire, 110-nation effort to expand and update GATT.

At the time of the accord, there was no assurance that the French - having shown themselves to be political hostages of their farm lobby - would not ultimately break with their European partners and block a GATT agreement anyway.

Today, there still is no assurance that won't happen, but there is stronger cause for hope.

Last week, EC negotiators emerged from marathon talks to announce an ingeniously ambiguous compromise on the European negotiating position. Essentially, it represents a wish list of French demands for altering last November's agriculture accord. But it remains vague on what should be done with the list.

The hope is that this language may provide political cover sufficient to placate (or distract) the French farmers until a GATT agreement can be achieved.

Just as important, the compromise will allow negotiators to go forward on the few outstanding issues, taking seriously a Dec.15 deadline for concluding the GATT talks.

Bargaining resumes this week in Washington. President Clinton should ask other heads of state to insist that their negotiators also take the Dec. 15 deadline seriously.

They must do this because, on the question of whether the world will become more protectionist or open itself to freer trade and increased prosperity, a very great deal depends.

by CNB