TNAG-0240-FCO40-276-Entitlement-of-Hong-Kong-to-generalised-tariffs-preferences--1970 — Page 104

to grant preferences to bona fida applicants and this was still our position. I pointed out that from what had been said in tho Committee one" could begin to have a fairly good idea of who the boneficiaries would be under some of the schemes (I meart, of course, that the OECD countries were likely to be excluded by the USA and probably the Japanese). Fublic opinion in the United Kingdom

could not be expected to accept a list of beneficiaries significantly longer than those of other major donors.

5. Other countries made statomonts which boiled down to the fact that

they were waiting to see what the bigger donors would do.

6

At the lunch Lengueti a gave us the usual Swiss line that he hoped that generalised preferences would enable us to solve the problem of special and reverse preferences in a catisfactory manner,

7. For the USA Cronk had nothing now to say except that if Romania

accedes to GATT and (it is not the same thing) gets min treatment at some stage in the USA then it is quite likely that they would then qualify for preferences pretty well automatically but no other Eastern European country except, of course, Yugoslavia. Cronk also commented on "burden shaving". He pointed out that according to an UNCTAD Study based on 1968 trade about half the benefits to less developed countica from the UNCTAD scheme would como from their trade with the USA (no-one wes in a position to dispute this but for all I know the Study may have assumed that all possible bonoficiaries would recoive preferences in the USA).

8

The Japanese repeated that they could not wait too long before naking up their mind since they wished to put proposals to their Diot very goon. If their proposals are not specific then they might not need to declare their proposed beneficiaries till say Jenazy or February but by then they will need to tell the Dict who their boncficiaries are to be. They regard, as we know, the 77 as the minimum. They were unlikely to include Eastern Europe because there is a strong lobby in favour of more trade with Cozmanist China and if one

adaitted Romania, this lobby would want Communist China in au well. It was of course pointed out to Ir Miyazaki that Communist China had not asked for preferences but, as usual, he was not visibly influenced by any argument or heckling.

9. Ir Miyazaki gave us no hint that Japan was going to relax the

criterion that there were to be no proferences for countries chvoking GATT Article XXXV against Japan or continuing discriminatory restrictions though he admitted that some "more liberal officials" hoped that they might be able to extend their proferences to some of the countries involved. Ho said at the

aceting, however, that several African countries had disenvoked Article XXXV recently in order to qualify for preferences in Japan.

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