
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, March 11, 1994                   TAG: 9403110200
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A-9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: TOKYO                                LENGTH: Medium

MOTOROLA, JAPANESE FIRM SETTLE DISPUTE

Motorola Inc. and a Japanese company resolved a dispute over access to Japan's cellular-telephone market in the face of U.S. threats of trade sanctions, a Motorola official said Thursday, another indication that the Clinton administration's strategy of talking tough with Tokyo on trade is working.

``Barring any last-minute glitches, it looks like we have a deal, and it looks like a very satisfactory agreement,'' said the official, who added that the details might be announced as early as today.

Under the tentative accord, Nippon Idou Tsushin Corp. (IDO) yielded to most of Motorola's demands for increased access to Japan's cellular-phone market. The agreement comes one week before the March 17 deadline U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor set last month for identifying Japanese products to be targeted for punitive tariffs if the dispute was not settled.

While easing one of the most prominent sources of trade friction between Washington and Tokyo, the pact leaves unresolved a host of other issues in the United States' efforts to shrink Japan's global trade surplus and increase access to Japanese markets for auto parts, medical equipment, insurance and other products. Talks on these issues broke down at the Feb. 11 summit in Washington between Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa and President Clinton.

The United States has stepped up trade pressure on Japan by reinstating a lapsed provision of trade law known as ``Super 301,'' which can lead to sanctions against trading practices that Washington deems unfair.

Although the Japanese have protested the U.S. approach as unduly heavy-handed, the Motorola case indicates they remain susceptible to such arm-twisting.

Washington brought the dispute to center stage shortly after the Clinton-Hosokawa summit, arguing that Japan had failed to honor a 1989 agreement granting Motorola access to the cellular-phone market in the heavily populated corridor between Tokyo and Nagoya. Japanese officials insisted they had gone out of their way to allow Motorola to enter the Japanese market.

According to the Motorola official, the two sides have agreed that IDO, which provides cellular-phone service in the Tokyo-Nagoya corridor, will substantially expand Motorola's access in the next 18 months so Motorola can capitalize on an expected explosion in demand for cellular phones.

The Japanese firm will build an additional 159 relay stations for the system, the official said, as well as add voice channels and transfer radio frequency to the system from another, competing IDO system that works on Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. phones.

by CNB