JAPAN

Tokyo Pushes Uruguay Round: Japan is willing to further open its markets--including the contentious financial services sector--in an 11th-hour bid “to accelerate the process” toward a settlement of the Uruguay Round world trade negotiations, a Japanese government official in Geneva said last week. Noboru Hatakeyama, vice-minister for international affairs at Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry, warned that, if present disputes were carried into 1993, there was a danger of a “chicken-and-egg” deterioration that could lead to the collapse of the round. “I don’t want to sound pessimistic--that would create a danger of a self-defeating prophecy,” Hatakeyama said as he prepared to lead the Japanese delegation into an end-of-year meeting of the top-level Trade Negotiations Committee in Geneva.