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were variable, The object was to ensure equivalent conditions of access or burden-sharing taking all these elements together. Leary considered that it was difficult to consider Leutrality in the abstract. Switzerland (taehelin) pointed out that the aim should not be to replace safeguard procedures or exceptions with special conditions in the rules of origin. To that extent the concept of neutrality was understandable.
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14. Other delegations seemed to favour the idea of neutrality. They included the U.K. (Kemmis) and Germany. Kemmis pointed out that all existing schemes of origin catered for special needs and that in a general system any attempt to cater for the problem of deflection of trade through rules of origin would lead to difficulties. Special national preoccupations should be taken care of through other aspects of the system such as exceptions and safeguards. 15. The Chairman (Wintermans), in a vain attempt to bring some order to this welter of views, attempted to obtain agreement on two promositions, namely, (a) that strict uniformity in rules of origin could not be obtained, least to start with and (b) that the systems adopted should nevertheless be "neutral" ir that origin rules should not be formulated in such a way as to be "restrictive"; any restrictiveness rather should be dealt with in other aspects of the system. But these formulations did not win full acceptance. In the end all that appeared t he generally agreed was that the unresolved questions on rigin could not be settled other than in conjunction with the considera♦ion of the other main aspects of a preferences scheme in the context of the elucidation and comparison of the illustrative lists. It was felt, however, that it would be useful to hear the views of developing countries on the technical aspects of rules of origin before the question wus considered further. In view of these conclusions it was also felt that the Expert Group should defer further consideration of the modalities of origin systems for the time being and should limit itself to preparing for discussions with the IDCS within UNCTAD.
Safeguard Mechanisms
16. Under item 5 of the Agenda the Working Group also considered the paper (TFP/T/515 (1st Revision)) on Safeguard Mechanisms. This arose from an examination by the Working Party of the Trade Committee of the discussion at the previous session of the Working Group (para raphs 5, 6, 7 and 8 of my memorandum under reference). Again the general view within the orking Group was to accept the paper as a good summary of the problems involved but not to attempt to reach final conclusions on the details involved at this stage This view was put by Japan (Miyasaki) who said that safeguard mechanisms were another subject that would need to be returned to after the consideration of all the lists and further discussion of all other elements of a scheme of preferences. It found general acceptance.
17.
Other points made included one by Denmark that the injury criterion in paragraph 4A(11) of the paper should not be
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