U.S. Negotiators Pull Out All Stops in GATT Talks : Commerce: Presence of American lobbyists, politicians and industry leaders is indicative of the political tangle.

The walls of the old city here were built more than 400 years ago. But played out within their stone confines on a recent misty night was a ritual of American politics as new as the pocket telephones on which its practitioners depend.

While negotiators from the world’s four largest trading partners--the United States, the European Community, Japan and Canada--met in seclusion at the private English Club, a group of Washington lobbyists, trade lawyers, members of Congress and aides gathered elsewhere on the old city’s narrow streets. They met on the only weekend of the year when les Genevois relax their legendary starchiness and celebrate their Calvinist ancestors’ victory in 1602 over the Duke of Savoy’s Roman Catholic forces.

The fete that brought the Washingtonians here was the marathon attempt to rewrite the rules of global trade, and even as they dined on sausages and drank the winter’s mull wine, their focus was the nitty-gritty of international trade and its impact on workers and businesses back home.

Their presence illustrates the tangle of politics, money and trade through which President Clinton’s negotiators must navigate as they try to reach an agreement on a massive global trade pact--without threatening crucial elements in the political coalition on which the Administration depends.

“There’s no way you can separate these issues,” said Gene Zeltmann, manager of trade and industry for G.E. Power Systems in Schenectady, N.Y.

The interaction between U.S. negotiators, on the one hand, and representatives of business and Congress on the other, has frustrated those seated across the table from the Americans. “The Asians are asking, ‘Why are you talking to the steel industry?’ ” said one Clinton Administration official. “The Europeans are asking, ‘Why are you talking to the aircraft industry?’ ”

The reason, he said, is that such contact throughout the final negotiations is crucial to obtaining a trade pact’s approval by majorities in the House and Senate, where campaign contributions and other forms of pressure served up by industry groups, environmentalists, organized labor and other groups can exert a powerful influence.

If trade is a numbers game, besides worrying about tariffs and import quotas to slash, negotiators here must also account for political figures--electoral votes in presidential elections, winning majorities in the House and Senate or dollars in a campaign war chest.

“For us, the key question is: Do we have more than 218 (House members) and more than 51 (senators)?” said a U.S. official deeply involved in trade issues. “That’s the name of the game. We’re representing the American business community, workers and consumers to get a trade deal that is in their best interest. You don’t get that by working in a vacuum.”

What happens here and now may have critical links to the 1996 presidential campaign. The Geneva talks deeply affect powerful players such as the financial institutions, which feared their interests would be ditched in the final hours of negotiations today or Wednesday, and the politically potent entertainment industry in Southern California, which has been a generous donor to Democrats and has a sway on the Golden State’s 54 electoral votes.

“In America, this all becomes special-interest politics, and you’re always playing to your constituency,” said a Republican in Washington with more than two decades of experience in presidential politics.

For days, U.S. lobbyists have filed into a conference room on the ground floor of the Intercontinental Hotel each morning to receive a private briefing on negotiations, which are aimed at rewriting the rules of global trade and slashing tariffs and quotas among 116 nations.

For the Administration official who conducts the briefing, this session has served the crucial purpose of determining how, for example, a proposal to cut tariffs on global chemical imports would be received by U.S. companies and whether they would devote their political muscle to fighting it or supporting it and what it would mean for the companies’ workers.

One floor away, in the hotel coffee shop, Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, has been conversing over breakfast and dinner at a table crowded with aides and others monitoring how the trade agreement might affect the entertainment industry.

In the lobby, Carlos F.J. Moore, executive vice president of the American Textile Manufacturers Institute, has expressed concern that Clinton negotiators were about to cut by five years the protections given to the U.S. industry against competition from products made by low-wage workers in foreign countries, without the United States gaining greater access to foreign markets for its companies.

He held a letter in which Clinton said he would not let that happen. It was written to Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. (D-S.C.) to gain his support for the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Moore’s message this week about the emerging global trade pact was one the Administration doesn’t want to hear. “We’re reaching the point where we’re not going to have any choice but to oppose it,” he said.

But a day later, U.S. officials and their negotiating partners reached an agreement, apparently providing just the sort of market expansion Clinton said he would insist on, in exchange for a quicker easing of tariffs that had provided some protection for some U.S. workers and companies from overseas competition.