Coalition Urges Delay of GATT Consideration : Trade: In a letter to Clinton, an incongruous group of more than 130 liberals and conservatives urge that Congress avoid ‘a rush to judgment’ on the new world treaty.

An eclectic, incongruous coalition of liberals and conservatives urged President Clinton on Monday to put off until next year final congressional consideration of the new world trade treaty negotiated by more than 100 nations last December.

In a letter to Clinton, critics ranging from consumer advocate Ralph Nader and California state Sen. Tom Hayden on the left to Pat Buchanan and direct-mail fund-raiser Richard Viguerie on the right say Congress should avoid “a rush to judgment” on the “vast trade agreement and its complex implementing legislation.”

In its more than 130 signatories, the letter reassembles many veterans of the unusual left-right coalition that opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement last fall. But the plea for delay reflects that coalition’s frustration with its inability to focus the same kind of public controversy on the massive trade treaty that developed around the free-trade agreement with Mexico and Canada. As it stands, Congress is likely to approve the world agreement later this fall.

The Administration said it had no comment on the letter. But officials indicated that the President has no interest in putting off the vote until next year. On Sunday, White House Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta identified the trade pact, along with health care reform and a pending crime bill, as the Administration’s top three legislative priorities this year.

At a news conference, Nader described the letter’s signatories as “probably the broadest political spectrum that has ever jointly petitioned a President.”

That is not much of an exaggeration: Those signing the letter included left-of-liberal writers Gloria Steinem and Noam Chomsky as well as conservative activists Phyllis Schlafly, Paul Weyrich and R. Emmett Tyrell Jr., editor of the American Spectator.

Also included are former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr.; Pat Choate, an adviser to Ross Perot; Ben Cohen, chairman of the company that makes Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, and singer Lou Reed.

The letter does not specify the group’s objections to the trade agreement. But most of the signatories have already made it clear that they think the agreement could infringe on U.S. sovereignty by making it possible for other nations to challenge domestic health, environmental and food safety rules as unfair barriers to trade.

U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor and other officials have repeatedly declared such concerns alarmist; in any instance, they argue, the proposed new mandatory sanctions would benefit the United States because this nation is more often a plaintiff than a defendant in international trade disputes.

The agreement will establish a new World Trade Organization, which could impose binding trade sanctions on nations whose domestic laws it deems discriminatory to foreign firms. Under rules of the existing agreement, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, there are no binding sanctions, because any country can block an adverse decision against its laws.