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pr Modern 3, Jura EN
formally stated that the U.K. claimed developing status on
behalf of all its dependent territories and expected them
all to he beneficiaries in a generalised system of preferences.
Everyone in the room knew that this was, in fact, a formal
claim on behalf of Hong Kong and, although no direct comment
was made on the U.K. statement, the U.S., EEC and Japan made
it clear that they could not accept the wording in page 23 of
the draft.
7. At that point Miyasaki (Japan) suggested a new form of
wording. After some wrangling and an insistence on a
reference to the Special Group Report, we were finally forced
to accept a text in the following form:
"Beneficiaries
With
As for beneficiaries donor countries would in general7
base themselves on the principle of self-election.
regard to this principle reference should be made to the
(1) relevant paragraphs in document TD/56
Part I."
i.e. Section A of
9
8. The words "in general" were put in square brackets at
our insistence and they will be considered again when the
Report goes to the Trade Committee on 6 and 7 November.
9. This was not a very satisfactory outcome from Hong Kong's
point of view, and afterwards I renewed my lobbying in the
corridors with both Leary (U.S.) and with EEC delegates to
point out that Hong Kong was ready to accept any reasonable
"competitive need" formula for particular products, provided
it was based on statistical criteria and was applied to any
developing country or territory that met those criteria.
added that what I considered to be unreasonable was to base
exclusion, whether by country or by country ty product, on
/purely
I
(1) The UNCTAD reference number for the Special Group Report.
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