New York Times / By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States formally asked the World Trade Organization on Tuesday to appoint a hearing panel to rule on its claims that Mexico is unfairly keeping U.S. companies from competing in Mexico's $12 billion telecommunications market.
U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky said her office filed a formal request with the WTO in Geneva after discussions with the administration of new Mexican President Vicente Fox failed to produce a breakthrough. Fox took office on Dec. 1.
Barshefsky said she had "very productive" discussions with new Mexican Trade Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez on Monday and both sides had agreed to further talks.
But she said that the administration went ahead with its request for appointment of a three-member WTO hearing panel to keep the case moving forward. Mexico exercised its right to postpone action on the U.S. request, which will delay actual appointment of a hearing panel until the WTO's dispute settlement body meets again on Feb. 1.
American telecommunications companies including AT&T Corp. and WorldCom Inc. allege that Mexican telecommunications giant, Telefonos de Mexico, known as Telmex, is conspiring with the Mexican government to keep foreign companies out of the Mexican market through high interconnection fees and other anti-competitive measures that violate WTO rules.
Barshefsky said it was her hope that the matter could be resolved before the 3-member dispute hearing panel is named in February. If the case goes forward, the WTO will have six months to rule on the dispute.
"We do want to work with Mexico to try and resolve the issues," she said. "Resolving these issues in a manner consistent with the WTO would be in Mexico's own interest."
Barshefsky made her comments during an appearance at the Foreign Press Center.
On other trade matters the administration is trying to wrap up before leaving office on Jan. 20, Barshefsky said that she was neither "optimistic nor pessimistic" about the chances that WTO negotiations to admit China into the body that governs world trade can be completed in early January. The WTO China working group meets in Geneva then.
"I think that the pace of the talks will be as it has always been, up to China," she said. "We will move as quickly as China wishes to move."
President Clinton won a hard-fought victory this year when Congress gave final approval in September to awarding China permanent normal trade relations with the United States as part of that country's WTO membership.
Since then, however, negotiations to wrap up the market-opening pledges China made with other WTO members have been going slowly.:
