[Infowarrior] - USTR to review transparency policies

[Richard Forno]

(Will this impact the suppressed ACTA documents being witheld due to  
"national security" purposes??  --rf)

Obama trade officials promise thorough review of transparency policies
By James Love, on March 20th, 2009
http://www.keionline.org/blogs/2009/03/20/ustr2review-transparency/

The following report was prepared by KEI, and reviewed by Daniel  
Sepulveda of USTR:

Obama Administration To Undertake Review of Transparency of Trade  
Negotiations

On Thursday, President Obama’s trade officials met with several civil  
society groups and promised a thorough review of the USTR policies  
regarding transparency. The review is expected to be completed within  
a few months. The process will include a meeting within a month to  
discuss initial specific proposals for openness and transparency.  
Citizens and NGOs are encouraged to think about the specific areas  
where openness and transparency can be enhanced and how. Among the  
specific proposals that will be evaluated are the following at the  
request of KEI:

1. Disclosure of all negotiating texts and policy papers
2. Disclosure of all meeting agenda (as soon as they are available),  
and participant lists, extending to plurilateral, regional and  
bilateral negotiations policies that are common at multilateral  
institutions.
3. Accreditation of civil society NGOs to attend meetings, including  
in plurilateral, regional and bilateral negotiations, as is common at  
multilateral institutions.
4. Public consultations and comment periods, including those that  
accept comments to web based forums.

In addition, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) is  
welcoming groups to make other proposals. For example, we suggested  
making private sector meetings, contacts and written submissions to  
top trade officials more transparent.

This review will be focused on making the recent statements by  
President Obama on transparency concrete and effective in the area of  
trade negotiations. The USTR encourages persons making proposals to  
address the practical concerns and needs of government trade  
negotiators to conduct internal debates on policy and to conduct  
diplomacy, as well as the public’s interest in access to information.  
For example, thoughtful discussions of the point at which  
communications with foreign governments should be disclosed and the  
extent of the disclosure required are more useful than broad high  
level statements on transparency.

The meeting was chaired by Daniel Sepulveda, a former Obama Senate  
aide who is now Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Congressional  
Affairs. Also attending from USTR were Timothy Reif, the recently  
appointed General Counsel of USTR, Catherine Field, USTR Chief Counsel  
for Legal Affairs, and Stanford McCoy, Assistant U.S. Trade  
Representative for Intellectual Property and Innovation.

Civil society participants included James Love, Judit Rius and Malini  
Aisola, of Knowledge Ecology International, Chris Murray of Consumers  
Union, Marcia Carroll of Essential Action and Eddan Katz of EFF (by  
phone).

KEI is very impressed with the USTR decision to undertake a review of  
USTR transparency efforts. They are taking this much further than  
simply reviewing policies on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), or  
recent controversies over the secrecy surrounding the Anti- 
Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) negotiations. The review offers  
the possibility of more transformative changes, including pro-active  
measures to enhance transparency, covering all aspects of USTR  
operations, including multilateral, plurilateral, regional, bilateral  
and unilateral trade policies and negotiations. We are also grateful  
that USTR is offering to have a continuing dialogue on this issues.  
KEI will offer additional suggestions on transparency to USTR, and we  
encourage others to do so also.

The USTR welcomes submissions of those suggestions to Daniel_Sepulveda at ustr.eop.gov