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Lamy: Clearer U.S. Policy Might Prevent Disputes
Trade disputes might be avoided if the United States would aim for a more clearly defined trade policy, a top European official said Monday.
On the heels of a U.S./European Union summit, European Commissioner for Trade Pascal Lamy told an audience at the American Enterprise Institute that while countries worldwide are working toward a new round of negotiations for membership rules in the World Trade Organization many trade disputes would be avoided by a "clear policy line."
"If we don't have that, we can be as brilliant as we like, we can be as nice or as nasty to each other as we like, but we will not be able to make deals with each other," Lamy said. "Currently, that is the missing piece of the jigsaw [puzzle], as far as I can see."
"To make our policy mechanisms efficient, transparent and legitimate is of the utmost importance," he said. "In order to do that, I think we need to be clear on what our policy line is."
But defining a clear policy for trade is difficult, Lamy noted, because negotiators, including the U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky must share the power with many decision-makers. "One of the hallmarks of trade policy today is the rapid change in the number of stakeholders," he said, and for that reason, the process has become difficult.
But the key to aiding the development of external trade agreement comes with aligning the decision-making processes. Barshefsky herself, in a speech this week in Washington, DC, before the Economic Strategy Institute, noted that before any trade agreements are reached, each side must come to the table with the full authority and backing of their countries.
Within Europe, member-states now recognize the importance of sticking to the common goal in negotiating trade deals, Lamy noted. But he expressed concern that the change in presidents and party control of the presidency in the United States might add to the polarization of Congress and the executive branch over environmental and labor provisions in trade negotiations.
Barshefsky echoed Lamy's argument that fast-track trade negotiating authority for presidents, which gives Congress only an up-or-down vote on any trade deals — is not necessary when an administration fully backs trade initiatives and keeps the lines of communication open to Congress through clearly outlined trade policies.
India Says Yes to Voice-Over Services
Reversing its earlier policy stance, the Indian government will update its telecommunications laws to permit voice-over Internet services, a top office said earlier this week.
India's Information Technology Minister Pramod Mahajan announced Sunday that the Ministry would replace the 1885 Telegraph Act and replace it with a new Convergence Act. The move highlights India's commitment to modernizing under new technology.
The Telegraph Act stipulated separate rules for the delivery of voice and picture data through telecommunications lines. Previously, the Indian administration had prohibited people from making phone calls over the Internet in part because of the existing Convergence Act but also because the government had no infrastructure in place to charge for its use.
At a two-day conference on technology and biotechnology, Mahajan said the new law, which could be cleared by Dec. 21 and ready for public comment by Dec. 25, would implement more cohesive laws governing the delivery system of voice and data through the Internet.
Meanwhile, Communications Minister Ram Vilas Paswan said India's top telecommunications provider, Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL), no longer would hold the monopoly over international telephony services. The Ministry of Communications has proposed a comprehensive compensation package to begin VSNL's transition from the sole long-distance and international-service provider by 2002.
German Court Targets Online Denial of Holocaust
A German court last week ordered the retrial of an Australian who was sentenced to jail for denying on the Internet that the Holocaust happened. The Federal Supreme Court ruled that Frederick Toeben, a former school teacher, could be charged with inciting racial hatred under German law because he posted materials — in this case a denial of the deaths of millions of Jews in concentration camps — that could be accessed by German Internet users.
A regional court sentenced Toeben to 10 months in jail last November for distributing leaflets in Germany that alleged that the Holocaust did not happen, a crime under German law. The ruling raises the sticky issue of jurisdiction for such illegal Web content postings under foreign laws. Officials acknowledge, however, that whether offenders can be prosecuted under German law depends on the willingness of other countries to extradite suspects for trial, Reuters reported.
Toeben initially was acquitted of charges of doing the same over the Internet after the court said the fact that the Web site was run on computers installed outside Germany meant it was outside its jurisdiction. "The question is now, what is the possibility of an extradition?" a court spokesman said.
Malaysia To Protect Islamic Religion On The Net
The Malaysian government announced last week that it would move to prosecute Muslim Net surfers who bash Islam on the Web. Abdul Hamid Othman, a minister in the Prime Minister's Department, told parliament that under Syariah criminal law, legal action could be taken against individuals who ridicule the religion on the Internet, the national news agency Bernama reported.
Syariah or Islamic law applies only to Muslims and covers family and religious matters. The country's civil law, which applies to all, is based on the British legal system.
A Right To Sue
A U.S. delegation trying to negotiated a standard for global jurisdiction over and enforcement of legal questions made little progress with foreign counterparts at last week's closed-door meetings to revise the Hague Convention on Jurisdiction and Foreign Judgments in Basel, Switzerland.
The U.S. delegation, led by officials from the State Department, met resistance for proposals that would alter the Hague convention, a global agreement that dictates that companies and organizations are liable to the laws of the state where they are based.
Sources told Technology Daily last week that the United States proposed altering several articles of the draft revisions to the convention that were adopted Oct. 30, 1999.
One point of contention for the United States, for example, is Article 37, which would cover the Hague convention's relationship with other global agreements such as the European Union's Brussels Convention. Recent changes to the Brussels convention approved by the EU-which gave EU citizens the right to bring legal actions against business according to the laws of the consumers' home state — raised concerns in the United States, prompting debate over how Article 37 should be revised.
One delegate noted that the stakes in the process are high. "Well, you can imagine if all of the bad laws of the world could be applied to you," the delegate said.
All sides have targeted June for completion of the draft revision to the convention. Informal talks will occur at a World Intellectual Property Organization meeting in January, a meeting of experts in Ottawa around late February and a meeting in Edinburgh in April, sources said.
- by Maureen Sirhal
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