U.S. official grilled over high tech plan

U.S. official grilled over high tech plan

MANILA (AFP): Acting U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky came under sharp questioning here Saturday after what appeared to be a clear U.S. climbdown on a high tech trade proposal.

Barshefsky insisted the United States had never sought an agreement from its partners in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum for zero tariffs by 2000 on information technology products.

Instead, she said, Washington had merely wanted strong APEC support for a campaign to have a tariff-cutting agreement ready for endorsement at a ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization in Singapore next month.

But members of her staff and other U.S. officials had previously left little doubt the U.S. objective at the just- concluded APEC ministerial meeting here had indeed been a firm agreement specifying zero tariffs by the end of the decade.

What finally emerged from the ministers, after days of intense wrangling among the 18 APEC members, was a statement "recognizing the importance of the information technology sector in world trade" and an endorsement of "the efforts of the WTO to conclude an information technology agreement by the Singapore ministerial conference."

For more than a few journalists and observers such bland wordage amounted to a setback for Washington, or at the very least a disappointment.

Not so, argued Barshefsky, who maintained the text had been unanimously approved and did not represent a delicately wrought consensus.

"The endorsement today by APEC members looking to conclude an information technology agreement is an extremely important step," she told reporters.

"This unanimity was our primary objective... The clear intention of the ministerial statement will provide a very significant boost to ongoing negotiations in Geneva."

Geneva is home to the WTO and where negotiators are preparing a draft agreement to be presented in Singapore.

While the United States would like to see tariffs cut back to zero by 2000, according to Barshefsky, it is in fact the job of WTO working groups in Geneva to rule on such details as product coverage and deadlines.

"The United States has never proposed to this meeting zero tariffs by 2000, " she said, the key U.S. objective having been to stimulate momentum to reach an agreement by Singapore next month.

Yet just this week U.S. trade officials in background briefings did not correct journalists operating under the clear impression that Washington's APEC goal had been an endorsement of zero tariffs by 2000.

Furthermore, on Nov. 13, U.S. coordinator for APEC John Wolf, according to a transcript prepared in Washington and released by the U.S. embassy in Singapore, said the following: "APEC serves as a catalyst for liberalizing the world trading system.

"This year we hope that APEC leaders will endorse an information technology agreement to eliminate all tariffs in that crucial sector by the year 2000."

When a reporter at Saturday's media conference read a similar assessment of U.S. intentions from Winston Lord, another senior State Department Asia specialist, Barshefsky suggested he was merely "describing what the ITA (information technology agreement) is."

The agreement would cover products such as semiconductors and software, a market where APEC nations account for 80 percent of global trade.

Exports of information technology products were worth half a trillion dollars in 1995, according to U.S. officials, and will be valued at $800 billion by 2000.