CANADA'S CLARK SEES TRADE AS MOST URGENT PROBLEM

  Trade is the most urgent problem
  facing U.S.-Canadian relations because of a pressing need to
  reach a new bilateral pact within the coming months, Joe Clark,
  Canadian secretary of state for external affairs, said.
      Negotiators for the two countries have been meeting for
  more than a year in an effort to work out an agreement.
      "The most urgent problem now is the trade question because
  that has to be decided within the next 10 months," Clark told
  the Commonwealth Club of California. "We have a fast track
  authority from your Congress for approval or rejection of
  whatever the negotiators achieve."
      Clark said that, as a practical matter, an initial
  agreement must be reached by late September or early October.
      He listed environmental questions, particularly acid rain,
  and defense as the second and third most important bilateral
  issues facing Ottawa and Washington.
      On Wednesday, President Reagan announced that he will seek
  2.5 billion dlrs from Congress to address the acid rain
  problem. Some interpreted the move as a goodwill gesture in
  advance of his annual meeting, on April 5-6 in Ottawa, with
  Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.
      In a question-and-answer session with the public affairs
  group, Clark said that the two countries must find better
  mechanisms for resolving their trade disputes.
      "This rash of countervailing actions, where we acted on
  corn and you acted on soft wood and we both said they were
  quasijudicial -- the dispute resolution mechanisims in place
  now are not working adequately in either of our interests," he
  said.
      Ottawa also is seeking to change some of Washington's rules
  on government procurement that penalize Canadian businesses, he
  said.
      "There are a number of Canadian companies that, in order to
  secure substantial contracts in the United States, have had to
  move their head offices out of our country into your country
  because you have national procurement requirements," he said.
      In turn, he added, the United States would like to change
  some of the procurement requirements that exist at the
  provincial government level in Canada.
      Clark declined to forecast the outcome of the discussions.
      "What will come out of it remains for the negotiators, in
  the first instance, to propose, and then governments and
  congresses will have judge," he said.
      In his prepared remarks, Clark said that the United States
  has tended to take Canada for granted, although it exports to
  its northern neighbor more than twice what it exports to Japan.
  "Yet you bought almost 10 per cent more from Japan last year
  than you bought from Canada," he said. REUTER
  

