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.