SOURCE: The Antigua Sun

With mounting pressures from the U.S., the gaming industry is waiting with bated breath for the ruling of a World Trade Organisation (WTO) panel, but delays in the process mean that the panel's response may now be months away.

Antigua's legal representative in its WTO Internet gambling dispute with the U.S., Mark Mendel, has indicated that, for a variety of reasons, the panel's review of U.S. legislation, originally expected to be completed in a three month period, has been delayed. Mendel expressed the opinion that the panel's decision is now unlikely to be given before January or February of 2007. The panel begun its deliberations at the beginning of September and was expected to render a decision early December.

In the meanwhile, Mendel and local gaming authorities are seeking support in their fight against what they term U.S. protectionism, stressing that despite the focus on Internet gaming sector, the issue at hand is not the morality or immorality of gambling.

"The key is that it's not really about morals; it's not about really about gambling, it's about fair trade. We're a very small country with very limited assets. We have been willing to be very accommodating to the U.S. in working out some kind of settlement and I just think it's about fairness," Mendel said.

Mendel expressed concern that the issue of fair trade is easily clouded when it is so closely tied to such a controversial indU.S.try as gambling, but said that the recent actions of the U.S. government have raised the profile of the trade issue and were likely to gain allies for Antigua & Barbuda as a result.

"I think this bill is going to make it worse for the U.S. because it has already raised the hackles of people in Europe and it has brought the issue out to the forefront where it increases our ability to discuss it publicly. That's been difficult before, because it's hard to raise the profile of the issue, but now they themselves have put it square out front and it's going to give us an opportunity to talk about how discriminatory the U.S. is being, how unfair their laws are and, using assistance from other countries, put pressure on them to actually deal with the issue fairly and satisfactorily," he said.