STATEMENT TO THE GROUP OF MINISTERS 101 towards their completion. But the United States led the way for the Uruguay Round of Negotiations, which effectively slammed the door on all aspects of restructuring the global economic relations between the rich and the poor countries. The stage was changed from the United Nations system to the clubs of the rich countries—the GATT and the IMF and the World Bank. The United States spearheaded the drive to negotiate in GATT a vast package of issues, which were mostly out of the competence of GATT. In place of its earlier somewhat boring work on tariff reductions, the GATT was now made the centre-piece to re-establish more firmly—and not to change—the earlier unfair international order. The GATT was chosen because the developing countries did not have the advantage of being organized there, as in the United Nations system, as the Group of 77. Moreover, GATT offered leverage for pressure by the West, as it could use GATTs provisions for trade sanctions across the board, including cross retaliation. In the name of trade, and the over-extended trade distortions, the GATT under the Uruguay Round of Negotiations was to deal with very wide basket of subjects, such as agriculture, commodity trade with special emphasis on textiles, investment measures, intellectual property rights, trade in services, new rules for GATT, and the creation of a multi-lateral trade organisation. Four years of negotiations upto the autumn of 1991 in GATT had left many issues unresolved. It was then that Mr Arthur Dunkel, the Director General of GATT, presented his draft of the Final Act of the Uruguay Round, as a package on a 'take it or leave it* basis. This background is of critical importance for assessing the present stage and the substance of the negotiations. In conclusion, it can thus be seen that there was a change in the stage of the play—from the United Nations to the trinity of the GATT, IMF, and the World Bank. There was at the same time in addition, a change in the very substance of the play. That Draft Final Act of Mr Aruthur Dunkel is not for promoting development co-operation and accommodating the entry of the developing countries on the world stage. Instead, it is aimed at establishing insidious control over the decision-making processes in the countries of the South. That is, the process of 're-colonisation* has now begun. THE DUNKEL DRAFT TEXT (DDT) SELECTED ISSUES The subject coverage in the Dunkel Draft Text (DDT) is so wide that I will have to be severely selective. I will take up agriculture and intellectual property rights in some detail because they affect the very vital sectors of our economy—agriculture and industry. Other subjects will then have to be discussed only in a summary fashion.