6/14.
CONFIDENTIAL
RECEIVED IN
REGISERY Ma.43)
- 8 MAY 1969
2457
7th May 1969.
72
UNCTAD: Tariff Preferences
Thank you for your letter reference 6/14 of 25th April in which you comment on the summaries which we circulated of the various OECD submissions. I have not been able to reply earlier because of the meetings on preferences in Paris and Geneva. The intention in the OECD Group is that when all the main submissions have been tabled, there will be some multilateral discussion of them so that questions can be raised and misunderstandings removed. Such a discussion cannot take place until the U.S. and Japanese submissions are available. The Americans announced in the UNCTAD Special Committee last week that they had now been given authority to prepare their lists for tabling in the OECD although they could not say when this would be done nor could they commit themsel- ves to participating in a preferences scheme at all. I understood privately from the Americans that it was likely that they would be ready with their lists quite soon.
2. The questions we have prepared on the EEC and other lists are designed for use in these multilateral discussions but are more likely to be used to obtain helpful replies in bilateral discussions outside the meetings of the group, with the other delegations. At the group's last meeting and at the Special Committee, I foună that, apart from the Scandinavians, the other CECD delegations were very reluctant to exchange information or views about their 1st March submissions. It seems that the delay on the part of the United States has induced a general feeling of frustration and passivity in these delegations and we are unlikely to obtain a very positive response to our questions in these circumstances.
3. I understood from Di Martino that, also as the result of the U.S. delay, little further progress had been made in the Community in resolving the various questions that have to be decided and which you and Tran have copied to us. This is not to say that work may not be proceeding within the Commission and any further information which you can glean about developments will be of interest. On the specific issue of Hong Kong we can leave it
D. H. A. Hannay Esq.,
U.K.Del. to European Communities, 28, rue Joseph II,
Brussels, 4, Belgium.
/for