US embassy cable - 04ANKARA1324

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