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To: KyrosL who wrote (63409)	1/22/2000 11:12:00 AM
From: Ruffian	Respond to of 152472

Talks with EU could bring China closer to WTO goal By Adrian Croft BRUSSELS, Jan 22 (Reuters) - European Union and Chinese officials meet in Brussels next week for negotiations which could bring China a step closer to its long-held goal of joining the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Teams led by Chinese Deputy Foreign Trade Minister Long Yongtu and senior European Commission trade official Hans-Friedrich Beseler begin talks on Monday. The EU will seek market-opening concessions from China -- a potentially gigantic market with one fifth of the world's population -- as a condition for its WTO entry. If all goes well, the talks, which are expected to last until Wednesday morning, could be the final round of technical negotiations between the two sides, EU officials said. An agreement could then be sealed in a meeting between European Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy and Chinese Foreign Trade Minister Shi Guangsheng in Beijing. China has been trying to join the WTO and its predecessor for 13 years. EU SEEKS LOWER TARIFFS, MORE OPEN MARKET The EU will press China, the largest trading power outside the WTO, for lower import tariffs on some goods and to move towards opening its telecommunications, banking, insurance, distribution, tourism and investment markets, EU officials said. ''We will try to do everything in our power to sort out all the problems next week,'' a top European Commission negotiator, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters on Friday. After the United States, Japan and Canada sealed separate pacts with China last year, the 15-nation EU is the biggest trade power yet to reach an agreement to allow China to join the 135-member WTO. Any WTO member has the right to negotiate its trade concerns with an applicant country. EU-China talks on WTO entry were interrupted for several months following NATO's bombing of China's embassy in Belgrade last May. Negotiators last met for three days of inconclusive talks in Geneva in October. Next week's talks coincide with a visit to Brussels by Chinese Vice-Premier Wu Bangguo, who will meet European Commission President Romano Prodi and other commissioners. EU UNDER PRESSURE FROM U.S. The EU is under pressure from the U.S. government to wrap up negotiations with China quickly to improve chances of getting quick congressional approval for its trade agreement with China. ''We would like to see them reach a conclusion as soon as they can and ... for our purposes, the sooner the better,'' David Aaron, U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade, said in Brussels this week. EU officials said they would not be rushed. ''We are certainly not going to conclude a single day earlier ... because somebody wants a deal to be adopted quickly in the Congress,'' the EU negotiator said. The EU says it has long been a supporter of getting China into the WTO. A more open Chinese market would offer the EU hope of reducing its huge trade deficit with China, which reached 21 billion euros ($21.15 billion) in the first nine months of 1999. EU officials say the U.S. agreement with China covered 80 percent of EU trade concerns. Under WTO rules, Chinese offers to the U.S. must be extended to all WTO members. But the EU has a number of concerns, on industrial goods, agriculture and services, where it wants Chinese concessions. The EU negotiator said the bloc was open to giving the Chinese transition periods to give them time to adapt to a global market economy. But the EU would insist on these being as short as possible, possibly one or two years. ($1 equals .9927 Euro) (Note: this article is ''in progress''; there will likely be an update soon.)