2.
On trade in services, the Director-General said: "Assuming successful conclusion of initial negotiations in the four service sectors
Basic Telecommunications, Maritime Transportation, Financial Services and Movement of Natural Persons, we want both to build on these and to push ahead in other sectors, for example professional services.
"Government Procurement offers further potential. We are a signatory to the old code, and our own practices are entirely open. We would like to have signed up to the new one, but cannot do so while it simply cements into place existing reciprocal restrictions."
Noting that the United States' appeals in this area would continue to ring hollow for as long as the "Buy American" provisions remained in force and sub-federal agencies were excluded, Mr Miller said: "By all means, let's put Government Procurement in the agenda, but let's talk turkey and not trimmings.".
Turning to the rules area, Mr Miller said: "We need global rules for a global economy. Currently, we have a complete mismatch between the way in which business is operating and the trade instruments, which we have developed and elaborated within GATT, now the WTO. When the rules become part of the problem. it is clearly time to re-examine the rules.
"Previous attempts at reform have tended to be piece-meal. They have also been adversarial and not particularly productive, as instanced by some of the haggling over relatively minor amendments to the rules during the Uruguay Round."
As business operates more multi-nationally, he said, the inter-relationship between trade and investment becomes more complex, as do the interlinkages between rules governing both, whether they apply to origin, anti-competitive practices, subsidies or incentives, domestic content requirements or preferential rules.
"There may not be a single solution," said Mr Miller," there is, however, clearly a need for ensuring that the multilateral rules are coherent, mutually consistent and lend themselves to equitable and economically efficient outcomes rather than the
reverse.
The Director-General said: " Hong Kong strongly urges that Ministers agree in Singapore to a broadly based, objective examination of the relevance of the current rules for a globalised economy.
"We accept that that sort of overhaul of the system is going to be difficult. There are huge vested interests in the current system. They will be very difficult to overcome. But unless we start the discussion in an intellectually honest way, we are never going to solve the problem."