U.S. and EC Make Concessions to Break Impasse in Trade Talks
A bitter impasse over farm subsidies that threatened to unravel four years of global trade talks has been broken, a Dutch official said today.
The United States and European Community both made last-minute concessions on agriculture and services to prevent the four-year Uruguay Round of talks from being suspended, according to a spokesman for the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
Dutch Foreign Trade Minister Yvonne Van Rooy reported the apparent break in the deadlock after Swedish Agriculture Minister Mats Hellstrom addressed delegates.
“He said the impasse is over,” Van Rooy, who attended a crisis meeting, quoted Hellstrom as saying. But she added that there are still major differences.
Talks were expected to last late into the night.
Canadian International Trade Minister John Crosbie said the concessions amount to “a reprieve” for the weeklong talks, which are due to end Friday.
The talks, supposed to crown the most ambitious free trade round that GATT has undertaken, have been deadlocked since opening Monday because of demands by Washington that the European Community make deep cuts in subsidies cushioning Europe’s 10 million farmers.
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