RESTRICTED  WORLD TRADE  
ORGANIZATION  TN/CTD/M/19 
21 March 2005 
 (05-1191) 
Committee on Trade and Development 
Nineteenth Special Session  
 
 
NOTE ON THE MEETING OF 8 FEBRUARY 2005 
 
Chairman:  Mr. Faizel Ismail (South Africa) 
 
 
A. ADOPTION OF THE DRAFT AGENDA ............................................................................................1  
B. CONTINUED DISCUSSION ON THE CHAIRMAN 'S SUGGESTED APPROACH FOR FUTURE 
WORK............................................................................................................................... ...........1  
 
 
A. ADOPTION OF THE DRAFT AGENDA  
1. The Chairman  indicated that the draft agenda for the meeting was contained in 
Airgram WTO/AIR/2484 dated 24 January 2005.   
2. The agenda was adopted . 
B. CONTINUED DISCUSSION ON THE CHAIRMAN 'S SUGGESTED APPROACH FOR FUTURE WORK 
3. The Chairman  said that at the last formal meeting of the Special Session held on 
7 December 2004, Members had had some initial discu ssions on his informal suggestion on a possible 
way forward on S&D.  He said that those discussions  had been preliminary and a number of Members 
had raised concerns and sought clarification on so me of the elements of the approach he had put 
forward.  A number of Members had also requested more time to reflect on the various elements of 
the approach.  Since that meeting, he had met w ith a number of Members to continue discussions on 
the approach and hear views on what Members felt  would be the best way to proceed.  He hoped, 
especially in light of the July deadline and the need to make progress on the remaining work, that 
Members had had the time to consider the approach he had suggested.  He said that he intended to 
continue discussions and address any con cerns that Members may still have.   
4. The Chairman requested that since a lot of wo rk remained to be done in a short period of 
time, it would help if Members did not repeat th emselves but rather continue discussions from where 
they had left off at the last meeting.  He said that it was important that Members realise that his 
intention was not to get an agreement on the appr oach but rather to get a broad acceptance of its 
elements as a guideline for addressing the remaining Agreement-specific proposals.  He did, however, 
realise that Members needed to feel comfortable with the approach before beginning work on the 
remaining Agreement-specific proposals and for that  reason wished to go over the elements of the 
suggested approach.   
5. The Chairman said that at the last formal meeting Members had had before them a non-
exhaustive indicative list of elements that he be lieved could be useful in addressing the remaining 
S&D proposals.  These elements, which should be read together, included the fact that effective market access for products of export interest to  developing countries was an important means of 
enhancing their economic devel opment and should remain a critical objective in the Doha TN/CTD/M/19 
Page 2  
 
 negotiations.  Secondly, that enhanced flexibilit y in WTO rules, with appropriate transitional 
arrangements, should enable the development of  developing countries and that these additional 
flexibilities should be made available to those Memb ers that were in need of them to address 
particular development challenges, whilst ensuring  that there was no a priori exclusion of any 
developing country from such a situational flex ibility.  There also needed to be multilateral 
monitoring of the use of those flexibilities.  Thirdly,  that flexibilities in the rules must be consistent 
with a multilateral rules-based system.  A strengthe ned multilateral rules-based system also remained 
important for supporting developing countries' effort s to build their competitiveness and integration 
into the world economy.  Fourthly, that enhanced capacity-building programmes must be developed to 
assist countries in implementing WTO rules and in addressing their supply-side constraints.   
6. The Chairman said that he had mentioned that within the overall context of those elements, 
Members should re-examine the remaining Agr eement-specific proposals with two possible non-
exclusive options in mind.  The first option being that  the proposal be redrafted or merged with other 
similar proposals in accordance w ith the approach.  The second option being that Members identify 
the underlying development issues that the different  Agreement-specific proposals had raised and to 
then address those issues in the context of the cros s-cutting issues.  In any case, the elements of the 
approach should not in any way dilute the flex ibilities that were already available to developing 
countries under the existing S&D provisions. 
7. The Chairman also said that he had suggested  that since many of the cross-cutting issues 
seemed to be effectively included in the broad appro ach, they could be clustered into four thematic 
groups.  Those included first, addressing the issues of enhanced flexibility in WTO rules called for by 
the S&D proposals;  second, fleshing out the concept of a Monitoring Mechanism and its 
implementation that had been called for by various Members;  third, addressing the need for enhanced 
capacity building raised by various S&D proposals;  and fourth, building the concept of coherence of 
policy making and implementation that could effe ctively assist the WTO to harness the specialist 
expertise of other multilateral agencies in giving e ffect to the proposals arising from the first, second 
and third thematic clusters.  Me mbers could combine the first two groups to create one thematic 
cluster and the last two groups into another them atic cluster, discussions on which could be held 
sequentially to facilitate and enable the participati on of all delegations.  These elements were in line 
with the Doha Mandate and the July Decision.   
8. Thereafter, the meeting continued in an informal mode.   
9. While Members were generally appreciative of the Chairman's efforts in trying to take work 
forward, they continued to stress the need for an y approach on future work to be in line with 
paragraph 44 of the Doha Ministerial Declar ation and paragraph 12b) of the Decision on 
Implementation-Related Issues and Concerns.  Some Members cautioned that there might be 
insufficient time to meet the July 2005 deadline if the Agreement-specific proposals were not taken up 
quickly.  Some Members also sought clarificati on on whether the approach applied to all S&D 
proposals, including those that had already been agreed to in principle, or only to the remaining ones.  
In this context,  the Chairman clarified that his inte ntion, at least at that stage, was to apply elements 
of the approach to only the remain ing Category I and Category III proposals .   
10. One Member on behalf of the LDCs stated that the existing proposals by the LDC Group 
needed to be addressed urgently and theref ore discussions on the approach should not delay 
addressing those proposals.  Any future approach including one based on situational flexibility, 
needed to automatically include all the LDCs as these countries were  already facing the situations 
likely to be identified as requiring additional flexib ilities.  According to this Member, the approach 
seemed to suggest a substantial redirection of th e Special Session's work on the review of S&D 
proposals as well as the cross-cutting issues and in that context it might have been more appropriate if the systemic and practical implications of the appr oach were examined in the Regular Session of the  TN/CTD/M/19 
 Page 3 
 
 
 Committee on Trade Development.  At the same time , efforts needed to be made, in the Special 
Session, towards identifying proposals of commercia l and developmental value and finding ways to 
address them on priority.  Reference was made to  commitments made at the Third UN Conference on 
LDCs as contained in the Brussels Declaration and the Programme of Action. 
11. With respect to the need for a Monitoring Mech anism as called for in the approach, a number 
of Members said that the modalitie s of the Monitoring Mechanism th at had been proposed by the 
African Group should only be discussed once work on the Agreement-specific proposals had been 
completed.  On the other hand, some Members felt  that Members should remain flexible and should 
not rule out, if the need arose, discussing the Monitoring Mechanis m whilst addressing the 
Agreement-specific proposals.  One Member in particular said that reviewing 'all special and 
differential treatment' with a view to strengthening  them and making them more precise, effective and 
operational as mandated by paragraph 44 of the Doha Ministerial Declaration did not preclude other 
proposals being made on the other S&D provisions contained in the WTO Agreements.   
12. While some Members admitted that they still ha d concerns with certain elements of the 
approach, they stated their willingness to be gin addressing the remaining Agreement-specific 
proposals using the approach as a guideline.  Most Members agreed that th e process followed in the 
past had not resulted in the anticipated progr ess despite the good will and flexibility shown by 
Members.  A number of Members also felt that  enough time had been spent on the approach and 
further efforts to seek convergence on the elemen ts of the approach could undermine the positive 
elements that had been gained from discussions over the past few months.  In that context, it was 
suggested that if Members were to meet the Ju ly 2005 deadline, then work should begin on the 
remaining Agreement-specific proposals.  It wa s suggested by the LDCs and endorsed by other 
Members, that the work begin by addressing th e remaining Agreement-specific LDC proposals as a 
matter of priority.  While some Members felt it was necessary for the proponents to consider 
redrafting some of their proposals, others believed th at it would be more useful if this exercise was 
undertaken after discussions had taken place on th e underlying issues that the proposals were 
attempting to address.  Some Members requested that  the Chairman provide, before the next meeting, 
a document containing the proposals that would be discussed as well as any othe r relevant information 
that would assist Members in their discussions.   
13. Reverting to formal mode, the Chairman said th at since no issue had been raised under other 
business, the meeting could be closed.  He th anked Members for their positive engagement and 
indicated that his intention was to shortly begin work on the remaining Category I and Category III 
Agreement-specific proposals, giving priority to the LDC proposals amongst them.  He also 
mentioned his willingness to meet with those Member s that may still have concerns about any of the 
elements of the approach.  He also intended to re main in regular contact with the Chairpersons of 
those bodies to which the Category II proposals had been  referred in order to ensure that work on 
those proposals was carried out expeditiously.   
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