AUSTRALIAN MINISTER SAYS AGRICULTURE GATT PRIORITY

  Australian Trade Minister
  John Dawkins said if the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
  (GATT) does not give high priority to agricultural trade reform
  it will be neglecting the area of greatest crisis.
      In a statement to the informal GATT trade ministers
  conference here he said agriculture is a problem which involves
  all countries and seriously affects the debt servicing
  abilities of a number of developing countries.
       He said major countries should be showing leadership on
  this problem.
      "We will be giving close attention to the processes in the
  OECD (Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development) and
  elsewhere leading to the Venice economic summit where we will
  be looking to the participants to adopt a strong commitment to
  agricultural trade reform," Dawkins said.
      The Venice summit is scheduled for June.
      He said Australia's interests in the Uruguay Round, the
  eighth under the GATT, are wide ranging. Dawkins said he sees
  the round as providing a timely opportunity to secure further
  meaningful trade liberalisation in all sectors and to restore
  confidence in the multilateral system.
      Dawkins said initial meetings of the negotiating groups
  established in Geneva after the GATT declaration last September
  in Punta del Este, Uruguay, have made a reasonable start, but
  it is vital that trade ministers maintain the pressure on these
  processes.
      "We must see that the commitments made at Punta del Este on
  standstill and rollback are carried into practice."
      The standstill and rollback of protection offers the global
  trading system a chance to hold and wind back protection during
  the negotiations which are expected to last up to four years,
  he said.
  

