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the same sort of time.
The Commonwealth countries concerned would therefore not know what was "on offer" to them from Europe until 1973 or 1974. If now faced with a cho ice between giving up reverse preferences (without knowing what these would "buy" from Europe) and participation in the American G.P.S., they would be in an extremely awkward position. Stern took these points and readily accepted that if the Caribbean had to exercise their choice this year or next they would be bound to side against giving up their bargaining position vis-à-vis Europe. Stern thought that alternative (b) would help to meet the Caribbean timing problem; however, he offered the view that it would be extremely difficult to operate the U.S. G.P.S. the basis of interim eligibility which would then be withdrawn. Moreover he doubted whether there was any real likelihood that the E.E.C. would offer something sufficiently attractive to the Caribbean without demanding reverse preferences, so that even if the present timing problem could be overcome the Caribbean would in the end be excluded from the American scheme.
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We suggested that a great deal could happen in Europe over the next two or three years and that, even if one made the pessimistic assumption that reverse preference would not be given up within the Yaounde system itself, it might be possible to get an offer for the Caribbean of some form of agreement or arrangement (short of full association) which would not demand reverse preferences. It seemed therefore that if the United States sought advance assurances there would be no reverse preferences, and if (as Stern himself predicted) this meant that the Caribbean would have to decide against participation in the U.S. scheme, this would mean that when negotiations between Commonwealth Caribbean countries and Europe commenced it would be virtually inevitable that they would in fact concede reverse preferences to Europe. In other words, by insisting rigidly on advance assurances (as in altenative (a)) the U.S. ran the risk of precipitating precisely that proliferation of preferential trading arrangements that it was their prime objective to prevent and which otherwise stood at least a chance of being avoided. We therefore felt that the best course would be to secure the very maximum of flexibility in the United States' scheme, at least so far as the very poor countries of the Caribbean were concerned. Stern indicated that he wished he could see a way of distinguishing the Caribbean from the Mediterranean in this respect. that the distinction seemed to be very realand that it had indeed
We commented frequently been argued in the past by the United States when they had sought to distinguish their firm op position to "Mediterranean Agreements" from their de facto acquiescence in the existing Yaounde system. For historical reasons, former colonial territories had been completely dependent upon markets for primary products which were otherwise simply
special access to metropolitan unmarketable. This could not be said of Spain or Israel; even the North African countries were by no means as dependent as the Caribbean on preferential access to Europe.
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