OTHER NEWS - June 23, 1993

House Extends Fast-Track Negotiating Authority: The lawmakers voted, 295 to 126, to extend the Clinton Administration’s authority to finish negotiations on a global free trade agreement. The bill empowers the President to enter into trade agreements worked out by the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. The Administration has urged Congress to renew this fast-track authority before Clinton goes to the summit of seven leading industrial nations in Tokyo next month. The summit is expected to focus on how to break the impasse--centering on European resistance to lifting agricultural subsidies--that has blocked conclusion of the Uruguay Round. The GATT talks began in 1986 and were supposed to have ended in December, 1990.