In this paper we propose a formalism for symbolic negotiation. We regard symbolic negotiation as cooperative problem solving (CPS), which is based on symbolic reasoning and is extended with negotiation-specific rules. The underlying CPS formalism was previously presented in [3]. Here we extend the results and position symbolic negotiation according to other distributed problem solving mechanisms. Categories and Subject Descriptors I.2.11 [Distributed Artificial Intelligence]: Multiagent systems; I.2.3 [Deduction and Theorem Proving]: Deduction; F.4.1 [Mathematical Logic]: Computational logic General Terms Algorithms, Theory Keywords Symbolic reasoning, partial deduction, cooperative problem solving, negotiation