GENEVA. Dec 11: The United States and the European Community have been making a "genuine effort' to end the farm conflict that is holding up the clinching of a new world trade deal, the U S Ambassador to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade said Tuesday, reports AFP.
However Ambassador Rufus Yerxa, speaking after a new round of US-EC talks on GATT, also made it clear that Washington now expected new concessions to come from the European side, while an EC official made the opposite demand.
Yerxa said that EC concessions to end the long-running dispute on subsidies to farm trade, which has held up the signing of the Uruguay Round of GATT tariff cuts for almost a
year, were not sufficient.
The U S negotiator expressed hope that if both sides showed a "spirit of cooperation." the talks could conclude before the deadline of December 20 set by GATT Director- General Arthur Dunkel.
If it drags on into the next year. ...I think we've got a serious problem,' Yerxa told a press conference at GATT headquarters here.
The two sides, the world's two biggest farm exporting blocs, are trying to on cute in overall farm tariffs of around 65 per cent over five or six years, amid resistance from the EC and concern among the hard-pressed American farmers about their export markets.
The U S official was particularly firm on the issue of ex-
ports of so-called cereal substitutes. such as soybeans and corn starch, which the EC continues to want to restrict.
The United States is a major exporter of such products, which are used as substitutes for cereals in livestock feeds.
The EC has sought to trade off concessions on allowing U S Imports of cereal substitutes for reciprocal advantages, a process known In GATT jargon as "rebalancing."
But Yerxa flatly stated: "there Is no possibility of rebalancing being part of this deal."
An EC official insisted however that without U S concessions on cereal substitutes, there would be no agreement at ked about Japan's objections to the tariff agreement. Yerxa said simply: 'oh, they will survive.'