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seems to be quite a hot one still) is how to accomplish this. Cronk has told me firmly that the State Department do not wish there to be either a statutory requirement to do so or a system requiring formal government-to-government undertakings before developing countries can benefit. He visualises that the State Department would in testimony at Congressional hearings indicate that satisfactory assurances (which could be of an informal nature) would be obtained before each country became eligible to benefit. He wants there to be some flexibility regarding time and nature of these assurances: but at some stage assurances of some kind there would have to be.
8. I hope I need hardly say that in discussion with both Stern and Cronk I have taken the opportunity to emphasize the very real practical difficulties which would face some of the poorest countries of the Caribbean if they were required to decide as between the American GPS and what might be offered to them from the EEC, particularly before they knew what could be negotiated with respect to the latter. Informally I have taken the line that although the United States may be morally justified in trying to get rid of reverse preferences it is a bit hard of the US to try to up-set existing trade arrangements, which are of vital importance to some very poor countries, in the context of a new multilateral generalised preferences system which for other countries is superimposed upon what went before. Ernest Stern in particular made it clear that he personally is deeply conscious of the very serious practical difficulties for some developing countries that would result from absolutely rigid insistence by the United States on the issue of principle.
9. All this is I think reasonably consistent with what Nat Samuels told Mr Rippon and Sir Con O'Neill. But I think it is important to remember that if (as Cronk at least visualises) the State Department testimony regarding "assurances" (as distinct from "undertakings") was written into Congressional Committee reports and became part of the "legislative history" of the US Generalised Preferences Act,
the degree of flexibility which will exist in practice might be pretty minimal.
10. Finally I think it may be worth mentioning that I also took the opportunity to ask Cronk whether the State Department had now prepared a considered statement of their attitude towards preferential trading arrangements. This had been foreshadowed when Mr Lightbourne recently spoke up strongly on the point; and Mr Lightbourne's remarks were followed
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