WASHINGTON. May 4 Mui ulateral talks aimed at liberalizing global trade in telecom muiucations services have bean extended until February 15. 1997 after the United States rejected as "inadequate" the offers made by many other countries, says US1S

"We have not yet reached a critical mass of quality offer** from our trading partners acting US Trade Representa-tive Charlene Barshefsky told reporters in Washington only hours before the initial dead line for conclusion of the talks April 30 "Rather than accept a bad deal — or walk away from the good offers tabled by many countries — the United States won-support for an extension of the telecom talks

The stakes in this negotia tion are huge — a global telecommunications market approaching 500 000 million dollars annually

Yet the decision not to conclude a deal now won full support from key US industry leaders

"We believe the US govern ment has made an <&traordi nary effort to reach an accord

to help US firms to compete globally and we think real progress has been made said Alex Mandi, president and chief operating officer of AT AT "Unfortunately, the of tors by other countries to open their markets have been for the most part insufficient and would do little to achieve that goal.'

Barshefsky said that the Clinton administration expects overseas markets to be as open to US goods, services and investment as the US market is to foreign goods and services.

However the existing offers in the telecom negotiations, taken together fail to cover 40 per cent of world telecom rev enues and about 34 per cent of global international traffic she said

"We will not enter an agreement on these terms she said.

Barshefsky said that only ten countries made offers equivalent to the US offer Aus tria Denmark Finland Ger many. Luxembourg. Netherlands Now Zealand Norway Sweden and United Kingdom