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The Sixth WTO Ministerial Conference
Hong Kong, China, 13 to 18 December 2005.
SUMMARY OF
13 DECEMBER 2005
Day 1: Conference opens formally and ministers consult on
industrial goods
The opening session took place in the afternoon and featured
statements from Chief Executive Tsang, Commerce, Industry and
Technology Secretary John C Tsang of Hong Kong, China, who is
the conference chairperson, WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy,
General Council Chairperson Amina Mohamed, who is Kenya’s
ambassador to the WTO, and UNCTAD Secretary-General (and
former WTO Director-General) Supachai Panitchpakdi, on behalf
of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Ministers then proceeded to the business of the conference.
Chairperson John Tsang confirmed his earlier announcement in
the WTO General Council in Geneva that he had invited six
ministers to act as “facilitators” to help him with
negotiations on various subjects:
-
Non-agricultural market access — Commerce Minister Humayun
Khan of Pakistan
-
Agriculture — Trade and Industry Minister Mukhisa Kituyi of
Kenya
-
Development issues — Foreign Trade and International
Cooperation Minister Clement Rohee of Guyana
-
Services — Trade Minister Hyun Chong Kim of Korea;
- Rules
— Foreign Minister Jonas Støre of Norway; and
- Other
issues — Foreign Minister Ignacio Walker of Chile.
At a
press conference later, Chairperson Tsang said he and the
facilitators will be holding informal meetings both among the
full membership and in smaller groups, ensuring “transparency”
and “inclusiveness”, i.e. that all members are informed and
are represented in the consultations.
As in
previous Ministerial Conferences, these informal meetings will
take place while the formal plenary continues with general
statements from ministers. The first consultation began
shortly after the opening session, on non-agricultural market
access.
Non-agricultural market access
Group meeting 5 pm
This
first meeting was short. Facilitator Humayun Khan (Pakistan)
said he hoped members would avoid the temptation to use the
large meetings to restate well-known positions or to make
tactical statements. The more time members spend in large
meetings the less time will be available to make real
progress, he said.
He proposed
concentrating the negotiations on small group meetings or
consultations between himself and individual delegations so
that he can sense members’ interests and concerns. For
transparency, he will also hold meetings with the full
membership.
Mr Khan said that his objective as facilitator is to reach a
result in non-agricultural market access that would be
acceptable to everybody.
“It may not be the one you would have sought or desired but
that is what compromises are made of. This is where the
challenge lies and of course this challenge is yours to meet,”
he said.
“It remains to be seen how much we can improve the [draft
ministerial] text, if at all, but we must all do our best”.
He also said it would be a pity to waste the opportunity of
this Ministerial to move the non-agricultural market access
negotiations forward.
“If we
don’t make progress this week we leave ourselves a monumental
task next year”, he said.
No member spoke and the meeting ended.
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