ST JOHN'S–An­tigua's Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Harold Lovell has re­vealed that Am­bas­sador Collin Mur­doch is en­gag­ing of­fi­cials and tech­ni­cians at the of­fice of the Unit­ed States Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Wash­ing­ton, DC, to try to once again bring their long-run­ning In­ter­net gam­bling dis­pute to an end. Lovell has promised that An­tigua and Bar­bu­da will "avail our­selves of any of the rights and reme­dies which have been of­fered to us."

Al­though an An­tiguan del­e­ga­tion did not at­tend the most re­cent World Trade Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WTO) meet­ing with the Dis­pute Set­tle­ment Body (DSB) in Gene­va, a Do­mini­can rep­re­sen­ta­tive read a state­ment on be­half of the na­tion.

At that time, the coun­try re­quest­ed the An­tigua/US dis­pute be placed back on the agen­da "to draw at­ten­tion to the fact that to date, the Unit­ed States has not com­plied with the rec­om­men­da­tions or rul­ings of the DSB" in the dis­pute or ne­go­ti­at­ed an "agreed com­pro­mise" in the mat­ter.

The fi­nance min­is­ter said he is most "pleased" about the "strong, tan­gi­ble" sup­port from re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners. He said the Peo­ple's Re­pub­lic of Chi­na has al­so read a state­ment to the WTO, of­fi­cial­ly sup­port­ing An­tigua & Bar­bu­da in the mat­ter. Lovell said, "dis­cus­sions are con­tin­u­ing" with the US, not­ing a com­pro­mise in the mat­ter is still the "prefer­able" course of ac­tion. How­ev­er, he said no sol­id com­pro­mise has been reached thus far.

Gov­ern­ment went back to the WTO in Jan­u­ary, re­ceiv­ing the go ahead to in­fringe on US in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty to the tune of US$21 mil­lion a year. Since the re­stric­tions were placed on in­ter­net gam­bling, An­tigua & Bar­bu­da es­ti­mates the dam­age to be US$3 bil­lion.

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