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- THE WEEK, Page 20BUSINESSStuck in an Old Groove
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- Bush and Delors et al. get nowhere on resolving issues that
- threaten GATT
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- If the elaborate tariff negotiations called the Uruguay Round
- finally fail, world trade and most major economies will suffer.
- For months the talks under the General Agreement on Tariffs and
- Trade have been staggering from one purported last try to
- another. Again last week no one dared call it failure when a
- crucial meeting among George Bush, European Community President
- Jacques Delors and Portuguese Prime Minister Anibal Cavaco
- Silva ended in impasse.
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- The hurdle remained, as ever, the question of agricultural
- subsidies. The U.S. demands a reduction in E.C. aid to farmers
- to a level that the Community and many of its biggest member
- nations find politically unacceptable. Bush tried to sound
- hopeful when he told reporters that some "new ideas" had been
- presented. Delors was probably closer to the mark when he
- described the proposals both sides were considering as "modest."
- The U.S. and E.C. will have still another try in time for the
- G-7 economic summit in July.
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