Cablegate: Qiz Followup Demarche Delivered to Mfa And

This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

051217Z Mar 04

UNCLAS ANKARA 001324

SIPDIS

STATE FOR E, EB AND EUR/SE
TREASURY FOR OASIA
DEPT PLEASE PASS USTR FOR LERRION
FAS FOR ITP/THORBURN
USDOC FOR ITA/MAC/DDEFALCO

SENSITIVE

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: ETRD TU
SUBJECT: QIZ FOLLOWUP DEMARCHE DELIVERED TO MFA AND
FOREIGN TRADE

Ref: STATE 49115

1. (SBU) Econoff delivered reftel points urging the GOT
to provide a unified and official response to our
Qualifying Industrial Zones (QIZ) proposal to Mehmet
Gucuk, MFA Deputy Director General for Bilateral
Economic Affairs, and to Osman Bekaroglu, Deputy
Director General for Agreements at the Foreign Trade
Undersecretariat, on March 5. Bekaroglu had no
immediate response. Gucuk told us the GOT was close to
an interagency consensus on the QIZ and would respond
to our nonpaper soon. In response to reftel points on
the advantages of retaining a catchall clause in U.S.
draft legislation, he said MFA would prefer that the
catchall clause be dropped. He argued that USTR could
still veto QIZ proposals without an explicit clause in
the legislation, and suggested that the USG make this
argument when it submits the legislation to Congress.
Gucuk thanked Econoff for reftel information and opined
that this would be one of the topics to be discussed
during the Ziyal/Larson telephone call following up the
December Economic Partnership Commission meeting.

2. (SBU) Comment: MFA will probably continue to press
for elimination of the catchall clause, even at the
risk of lengthening the list of sectoral exclusions in
the final draft of QIZ legislation. MFA wants to be
able to show Turkish industry that it succeeded, or at
least tried hard, in chipping away some of the limits
in our QIZ proposal. If the end result is a QIZ with
more limited sectoral coverage, MFA will lay the blame
with protectionist interests in the U.S. Congress, or
with the Administration for not pushing hard enough on
this issue.
Edelman

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