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donor countries, should he submitted.
The object of the
EEC in proposing to table their own scheme was to gain as much
political kudos with the developing countries as they could.
They are not anxious to see any common system of preferences
and would be quite content to go ahead with their own scheme,
tailored as necessary in the light of what the United States,
in particular, finally proposes. Indeed, even if the U.S.
were to finally decide not to grant any preferences at all
(which seems unlikely at this stage), there is a rumour that
the EEC may propose that the European countries should go
ahead with some version of their own schemes independently.
4. When I arrived the position was that the U.S. (who wanted
only common documentation) had proposed that substantial
elements in Part I of the Secretariat's draft should be
transferred to Part II (the draft submission to UNCTAD) in
order to fill out the latter. This proposal had been supported
by the U.K. and the Nordic countries.
The U.K.'s view was
that, if only slender common documentation was forwarded,
with some individual submissions annexed, the developing
countries would be likely to claim that this could have been
done earlier and that considerable time had been wasted.
could also claim and this would be true that little or no
progress had been made in OECD discussions since the tabling
of most individual submissions as far back as March of this
year. The EEC, on the other hand, turned out to be vehemently
opposed to putting any of Part I into Part II. They seemed,
if anything, anxious that the common documentation should be as
thin as possible so that, as stated above, they could obtain
political kudos from the LDCs in tabling their illustrative
offer at a time when the United States would not be in a positi
to do the same. The temptation to gain a trick for themselves
at the expense of the U.S. seemed to them to be too good to miss.
15.
They
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