Subject: OECD "MAI very much alive" (fwd)
Date: Sun, 5 Apr 1998 062955 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Roy L. Beavers" <rbeavers@llion.org>
To: emfguru@hotmail.com
--------------------------------------------------
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 5 Apr 1998 12:31:54 +1000
From: Kerrie Christian
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Subject: OECD: "MAI very much alive"
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>Date: Sat, 04 Apr 1998 16:57:31 -0500
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>From: Bob Olsen
>Subject: OECD: "MAI very much alive"
>Cc: mai-not@flora.org
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> Forwarded message.......
>
>Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 08:45:42 -0500 (EST)
>From: Andrea Durbin
>To: Undisclosed recipients: ;
>Subject: OECD: "MAI very much alive" (fwd)
>
>
>** Reuters article on the status of the MAI.**
>
>OECD investment pact ``not dead,'' just convalescing
>08:37 a.m. Mar 26, 1998 Eastern
>
>PARIS, March 26 (Reuters) - An OECD treaty on investment liberalisation
>is not dead even if an initially hoped-for deal by end-April is no
>longer on the cards, OECD Deputy Secretary General Joanna Shelton
>said on Thursday.
>
>``Contrary to reports saying otherwise, the MAI treaty is not dead.
>MAI remains very much alive at the OECD,'' Shelton told reporters.
>
>``Yes, there is a time problem. This is simply proving more complex
>than thought at the beginning. Every agreement is toughest at the
>end,'' she said.
>
>U.S., French and other key players said after talks in mid-February
>the treaty -- called the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI)
>-- was far from acceptable and the U.S. team at the talks said they
>saw no deal by the end-April deadline.
>
>Since then, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
>has been going to considerable lengths to keep the momentum going
>and saying the project will survive, even if it has taken a knock.
>
>Rather than go for broad political agreement on the treaty at the
>annual ministerial meeting on April 27-28, the OECD's Paris-based
>secretariat is now limiting its ambitions to securing a renewed
>political mandate.
>
>Shelton told a news briefing the treaty might have stalled but that
>representatives of the 29 OECD countries as well as the European
>Commission made it clear at a meeting here last week there was a
>unanimous political will for it.
>
>The April 27-28 meeting was expected to back this up with a fresh
>negotiating mandate.
>
>While bilateral agreements exist between many OECD states on fair
>treatment of investors, the OECD treaty is a first attempt to create
>an extensive, multilateral pact obliging countries to treat foreign
>investors in the same way as they treat their own.
>
>Among other things, the treaty could affect national rules on
>foreign ownership restriction, notably in the domain of corporate
>privatisation, as well as the way governments hand out subsidies.
>
>One of the main snags in the talks is the insistence by France and
>several other major players that the U.S. repeal trade sanctions
>legislation such as the Helms- Burton Act against Cuba on the
>grounds that the U.S. cannot have laws which also hit at other
>countries doing business with Havana.
>
>Shelton stressed that the Helms-Burton conflict was being dealt
>with elsewhere than at the OECD -- mainly between the European
>Commission in Brussels and Washington -- but she conceded that a
>deal on this issue was crucial.
>
>``It is very important that it is resolved so that the political
>atmosphere on MAI can be positive,'' she said.
>
>U.S. negotiators said in February that they could not live with
>the treaty as it was shaping up and noted that they had problems
>with exceptions being negotiated from the rule of non-discrimination.
>
>Those included a waiver clause to protect European government
>actions linked to European Union integration.
>
>France is also insisting along with Canada that cultural material,
>for the large part cinema, be exempted from the investment
>liberalisation treaty, as it was from free trade rules at the World
>Trade Organisation in Geneva.
>
>Other OECD officials at the briefing said Frans Engering, who is
>standing down after three years chairing MAI treaty talks in Paris,
>had produced new proposals last week in an attempt to generate a
>consensus on protection of the environment and labour standards.
>
>One of the officials said four key proposals had been put on the
>table, including an important new provision which would legally
>oblige signatory states not to compete for inward investment by
>lowering labour or environment standards.
>
>((Brian Love, Paris newsroom, +33 1 4221 5452, fax +33 1 4236 1072,
>paris.newsroom+reuters.com))
>
>Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited
>
>
>
> Bob Olsen Toronto bobolsen@arcos.org (:-)
>--
>For MAI-not subscription information, posting guidelines and
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>
Archive provided courtesy of WaveGuide, http://www.wave-guide.org
Reprinted with permission of Roy Beavers, http://www.feb.se/EMF-L/EMF-L.html