. /.RESTRICTEDWORLD TRADE
ORGANIZATIONWT/GC/W/128
22 December 1998
(98-5154)
GENERAL COUNCIL
Informal Meeting held on 14 December 1998
Report by Ambassadors Lafer and Rossier on their Consultations
on the Appointment of the next Director-General
In the report submitted to the General Council on 10 December, Ambassador Lafer and I
stated that we were fully aware of the fact that the current lack of clarity in the situation could hardly
be maintained much longer as regards the tendencies emerging from the consultations we have heldconcerning the choice of one of the four candidates to the post of Director-General of the WTO.  We
expressed our wish to hear the views of Memb ers before voicing our own views on the subject.
Mr. Chairman, you said yourself following our discussions on 10 December that many
Members who took the floor on that occasion wished to be informed of the degree of support  for eachone of the four candidates.  Ambassador Lafer and I will abstain from expressing our views on the
utility of providing such information in the fr amework of the consensus procedure that we are
conducting, and wish to stress that even today, the views and positions of certain delegations are still
unknown.  We note, however, that informing Members of the general tendencies emerging from the
consultations corresponds to a political expectation.
Thus, we shall inform you today of the tendencies revealed by the consultations in respect of
each one of the four candidates on the basis of the information we received during this process in
which all delegations of WTO Members were invited to participate, whether or not they had a
permanent representation in Geneva.  In the two reports submitted to the Heads of Delegation and the
General Council on 2 and 10 December, we informed the Members of the scope and modalities of the
consultations.  We shall not revert to that subject.  Delegations are invited to refer to those two reportsif they so wish.
We measured the degree of support for each one of the candidates taking account of the three
following criteria:
1. The hierarchy of preferences expressed by Members in respect of the four candidates.
This is, as it were, the "arithmetical" element of the appreciation.
2. The extent of the support given to each of the four candidates in terms of
geographical distribution.
3. The degree of acceptance of each one of the four candidates among all of the
Members of the Organization.  Here, we analysed the positions expressed by
Members with respect to each one of the four candidates in order to judge whether the
different candidates enjoyed a high degree of acceptance or, on the contrary, a
significantly lower degree.WT/GC/W/128
Page 2
There is no conflict in the results of our assessment of these three criteria -  on the contrary,
the results tend to converge.  Thus, all three criteria point to the following hierarchy which emerges
from the consultations:
The highest degree of support was obtained by Mr. Supachai Panitchpakdi of Thailand.Mr. Mike Moore, of New Zealand, received ap proximately 75 per cent of the support given to
Mr. Supachai.
Mr. Hassan Abouyoub, of Morocco, received a little less than 50 per cent of the support given
to Mr. Supachai.
Mr. Roy MacLaren, of Canada, received somewhat less than 30 per cent of the support given
to Mr. Supachai.
On a strictly confidential basis we informed the Heads of Mission of the four candidate
countries at 9 o'clock this morning of the gist of what Ambassador Lafer and I have just informed you.
We think that the Heads of Delegation would like to reflect on the information we have just
given them based on the data we have gathered thus far.
We look forward with great interest to the results of these reflections – on 18 December, we
suppose.  Ambassador Lafer and I will then reflect, in  our turn, on the best way to continue seeking a
consensus as rapidly as possible in the framework of the terms of reference given to us as
"facilitators" by the General Council.  Unless, of course, it is decided otherwise.
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