RESTRICTED  WORLD TRADE  
ORGANIZATION  TN/C/M/19 
15 September 2005 
 (05-4065) 
Trade Negotiations Committee 
21 and 28 July 2005  
 
 
 
MINUTES OF MEETING 
 
Held in the Centre William Rappard  
on 21 and 28 July 2005  
 
Chairman: Dr. Supachai Panitchpakdi (Director-General) 
 
 
 Prior to taking up the first item on the agenda, the Chairman  suggested that some flexibility 
was needed in the organization of the present me eting.  As intensive work was still going on, 
particularly in agriculture, non-agricultural mark et access (NAMA) and the special and differential 
treatment (S&D) area, it seemed sensible to postpone the discussion of the state of play in the 
negotiations to allow time for these important efforts.   He intended, therefore, to suspend the present 
meeting and to ask all partcipants to remain on call,  and to reconvene the following week in informal 
or formal mode as necessary, but at the latest immediately before the General Council.   
 
 He suggested that the TNC should take up its first agenda item, which concerned 
implementation.  For agenda item 2 – reports by the Ch airs – he did not propose to invite the Chairs to 
take the floor, unless they wished to do so, since most of them had provided or were to provide 
written assessments of the state of play in their respective areas.  The Chairs would have a further 
opportunity to take the floor if necessary when the meeting was resumed the following week.   
  With regard to agenda item 3, which was hi s own report, he intended to make only a brief 
statement to give his overview of the situation.  He hoped that he would be ab le to supplement this in 
a positive way when the meeting re sumed, but that very much de pended on what further progress 
could be achieved in the following days in key areas.   He would then open the floor for comments by 
participants, but he did not wish to encourage le ngthy or numerous statements since time would be 
better spent trying to advance the negotiations at th e specific level.  There would be further occasions 
at the resumed TNC and at the General Council for delegations to put their views on record. 
  The representative of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela
 said that, since the agenda 
circulated on 11 July in document WTO/AIR/2623 ha d been amended, and before agreeing to the 
course of action proposed by the Chairman, and in re gard to the urgent fax sent by the Secretariat the 
previous day, his delegation wished to seek clarific ation.  Delegations had been informed that the 
present meeting of TNC would be adjourned in orde r to allow time for further consultations planned 
or under way by Chairs of some negotiating groups, particularly agriculture and NAMA.  Delegations 
had also been informed that the present meeting would be kept open, which, together with the 
announced intention of the Chairman of the Gene ral Council to open, adj ourn and reconvene the 
General Council meeting, would impl y overlapping with the General Council meeting of 27 July.   
  His delegation wished to seek clarification on bo th substance and procedure.  With respect to 
substance, it wished to know whether it was the Ch airman's expectation that the consultations which 
would be carried out would produce modalities and/or proposals by consensus for the consideration of 
the two meetings.  If that was the case, he wish ed to underline his delegation's profound concern TN/C/M/19 
Page 2  
 
 about the limitations that this would impose on its ability to respond in a transparent and inclusive 
manner to such proposals.  Although his delegati on understood the reasons for this approach, it 
considered that such an approach was inappr opriate to the interests of the negotiations. 
  With respect to procedure, it wished to know whether it was the Chairman's expectation that 
this approach would lead to meetings being held in  various formats during the period up to 29 July.  It 
also wished to know whether the Chairman held the view that, in the case where no agreement was 
reached in the TNC, the General Council meeting s hould be extended beyond 29 July.  If the answers 
to these two questions were in the affirmative, it would be impossible for his delegation to agree to 
any consensus decision emanating from these fora without having direct participation in them. 
 
 The Chairman
 said that what he had suggested was not in fact an amendment to the agenda.  
The fax which had been sent out had notified delegations of the po ssibility of adjourning the present 
meeting.  As delegations were aw are, he had often expressed his concern about the urgency of making 
progress, and his suggestion for the present meeting was aimed at allowing delegations to spend as 
much of the time remaining before the end of th e month as possible on real negotiations, rather than 
on making generalized statements in the TNC.  This  was the reason for the suggestion to suspend the 
meeting until later.   In terms of substance Members were awar e that there were negotiations still ongoing, 
particularly in three areas – agriculture, NAMA, and development.  As far as he knew, the Chairs and 
the delegations involved were quite determined to do their utmost to  make use of the remaining time 
to see whether there could be more convergence in these key areas.  However, he could not predict 
whether there would be consensus on modalities.  What was required was for Members to work as 
effectively as possible to salvage as much convergence as possible before he made his final report to 
the General Council.  
 
 On the question of whether the General C ouncil would be extended beyond 29 July, he said 
that the Chairman of the General Council had alrea dy announced that 29 July would be the final day, 
so there would be no extension.   
Subjects discussed
: Page  
 
1. Report by the Director-General on his consultative process on all outstanding 
implementation issues under paragraph 12(b) of the Doha Ministerial Declaration. ................................................................................................................... ............2  
2. Reports by the Chairpersons of th e Bodies Established by the TNC...................................7  
3. Report by Chairman............................................................................................................. ..15 
4. Statements by participants..................................................................................................... 17 
 
1. Report by the Director-General on his consultative process on all outstanding 
implementation issues under paragraph 12(b) of the Doha Ministerial Declaration. 
1. The Director-General
 started by recalling that, in line with the July 2004 Decision, he had 
continued his consultations on the paragraph 12(b) implementation issues in his capacity as Director-
General, including on issues related to the extensi on of the protection of geographical indications 
(GIs) provided for in Article 23 of the TRIPS Agreemen t to products other than wines and spirits.  In 
accordance with the Decision, the pr ocess he had undertaken was without  prejudice to the positions of 
Members on any of the outstanding implementation issues.  TN/C/M/19 
 Page 3 
 
 
 2. As requested in the Decision, he had repor ted on progress at the May TNC and General 
Council meetings.  He had suggested that his c onsultative processes should continue and that he 
would then report again to the July meetings of the TNC and General Council.  The aim had been to 
move ahead wherever possible, so that the Gene ral Council was in a position to review progress and 
take any appropriate action, in lin e with the July 2004 Decision. 
3. He wished to provide an update on his consulta tive processes since his last report in May.  As 
before, this work had been undertaken on two trac ks.  The first track, concerning all outstanding 
paragraph 12(b) implementation issues except the GI extension issue had been undertaken by Chairs 
of concerned WTO bodies acting as his Friends on  his behalf.  The second track of work, which 
concerned the GI extension issue, had been unde rtaken by Deputy Director-General Mr. Thompson-
Flôres, also on his behalf. 
4. He was most grateful to his Friends and to  Mr. Thompson-Flôres for the strenuous efforts 
they had put in to make progress on all the individual issues.  From the reports they had made to him, he regretted that not much progress had been made since he last reported in May.   
5. He wished first to update his progress report on the first track of the work, which concerned 
the outstanding issues in seven areas.  In the TRI PS area, a further "dedicated" consultation in an 
open-ended format had been held on the issue of  the relationship between the TRIPS Agreement and 
the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), whic h covered aspects of four proposals made in this 
area.  He understood that positions still remained divi ded on this issue.  As regards the other TRIPS 
proposals, namely those relating to extension of  transitional periods for developing and least-
developed countries(LDCs) and to transfer of tec hnology, he understood that once again no delegation 
had taken the opportunity to raise any of them.   
6. After further consultations held in the Ba lance of Payments (B OP) area, the Committee 
Chairman had reported to him that, in spite of effo rts on all sides to attempt to bridge the remaining 
divergence, it had became apparent that no agreement could be reached at this stage, due in part to 
systemic implications.   
7. In the Market Access area, as he had reported in May, Barbados and Antigua & Barbuda had 
undertaken to come forward with  a paper aimed at providing more precision regarding the only 
proposal, which concerned a redistribution of negotiating rights that had been originally proposed by St. Lucia.  He understood that this  paper was still being awaited.   
8. In the area of Trade Related Investment M easures (TRIMs), he understood that further 
consultations had been held, including an informal  open-ended meeting, and that the proponents had 
provided a new communication concerning the flex ibilities contained in the TRIMs Agreement for 
developing countries.  However, it appeared that the positions of Members had not changed since his 
report in May.  Differences of view still remained  both on the substance of the proposals themselves 
and on how to proceed with the consider ation of the outstanding issues.   
9. On all five proposals with regard to the Cust oms Valuation Agreement, he understood that the 
situation remained unchanged and that there was no visible prospect of moving forward on these 
issues.   
10. On the single proposal in the Safeguards area, he  understood that the situation again remained 
unchanged since the Committee had reported in 2002 that  it had not able to suggest a course of action 
on the issue due to a lack of convergence.   
11.
 In the area of Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT ), and in light of the work the Committee had 
undertaken on technical assistance and Supplier's Declaration of Conformity, the Committee TN/C/M/19 
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 Chairman had explored, in informal mode on 16 Ju ne, if there was any scope for further discussions 
on the two outstanding implementation issues.  As be fore, it appeared that this consultation did not 
give the Chairman any grounds on which to be able to suggest a course of action to be followed on 
these tirets.   
12. Turning to the second track of work, which con cerned the GI extension issue, he said that 
since his report in May, Mr. Thompson-Flôres had convened a meeting on 17 June, to carry forward 
the technical-level consultations.  Mr Thompson-Fl ôres had reported to him that the discussions did 
not indicate any narrowing of the gap between Me mbers' positions, which remained divided on both 
the merits of GI extension and on its  relation to the Doha Round.   
13. Overall, the situation had clearly not evolved significantly since May.  He would therefore 
suggest again to the General Council in the following week that his successor be requested to continue 
the consultative processes after the summer break.  For his part, he once again urged everyone to 
make every effort to allow progress to be made. 
14. The Chairman
 proposed that the Trade Negotiations Committee take note  of his report in his 
capacity of Director-General.   
15. The representative of Bulgaria  said that he had not intended to take the floor, but he could not 
agree to taking note of the Director-General's re port so quickly because his country attached great 
importance to one of the issues in the report.  Hi s delegation believed that simply taking note that 
there was no narrowing of the gap between Members'  positions, which remained divided both on the 
merits of GI extension and on its  relation to the Doha Round was to  sweep the issues under the carpet, 
as had happened so many times.  With regard to the second part of this assessment, his delegation 
could not simply take note of the fact that there was disagreement on the relation of GI extension to 
the Doha Round.  His delegation had a great problem  with the way some delegations interpreted the 
Doha Declaration, which was contrary to its letter and spirit and to what had been agreed at Doha.  
This was all the more so bearing in mind the status  of implementation issues in this Round – that they 
had to be resolved upfront, first.  His delegati on had noticed no progress in this respect, which was 
probably fine with some delegations but certainly not with his.  Simply saying that that there was no 
agreement on the status of the mandate in the Doha  Round was an attempt to change what had been 
agreed to be negotiated in Doha.  His delegation believed that some delegations were not acting in 
good faith, by refusing to negotiate on something on which they had committed to negotiate.  This 
would influence Bulgaria's readiness to agree to decisions on other issues.   
16. The July 2004 Decision had been possible b ecause implementation issues had been accorded 
a special status.  There had to be proposals fo r appropriate action on these issues, unlike on other 
issues like agriculture or NAMA et c.  These issues were among the fe w with a deadline.  Members 
had not respected this deadline.  His delegation ha d wished to see the Chairs being as active on these 
issues, especially the one in whic h Bulgaria was interested, as some other Chairs were on issues 
where Members had not agreed to deadlines.  No work was being done on texts on GIs; in fact, 
nothing had been to ensure that Members had befo re them a proposal for an appropriate solution to 
this issue – something they had agreed to do in 2004.   If there were a failure at the end of the month, 
and if this failure had to be measured against wh at Members had agreed one year ago, it would be a 
failure precisely on these issues because Members had ag reed that in July this year, they would have 
appropriate solutions. 
17. The Chairman  said that although he could just propose to  take note of Bulgaria's statement, he 
wished to disagree with that delegation, not in terms of substance, but rather he did not agree that he 
had not allowed Bulgaria to speak.  It had been ma de clear in the proposed agenda that item 4 was for 
delegations' statements.    TN/C/M/19 
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 18. The representative of Bulgaria  said that he did not disagree with the Chairman, but his 
delegation had just wanted to express its opinion on  the report under item 1 of the agenda before the 
TNC took note of it because it understood it to be a separate item on the agenda.  The present item was item 1, and his delegation understood that the st atements to be made by participants under agenda 
item 4 related to the reports of the Chairman and Chairpersons of TNC bodies under items 2 and 3.   
19. The Chairman
 accepted the point Bulgaria had just made.  However, he did not agree with 
Bulgaria's view that the Chairs had not been wo rking actively enough.  He did not believe that any 
other process on implementation could have been mo re effective.  All his Friends and the Deputy 
Director-General concerned had exerted every e ffort to try to find a way to work towards 
convergence.  The fact that such convergence had not been reached was not due to a lack of effort.  
The same situation existed in almost all areas of negotiation and Bulgaria was aware of this.  His 
report as Director-General could only reflect the situation as his Friends and the Deputy Director-
General had reported to him. 
20. The Trade Negotiations Committee took note  of the report by the Director-General and of the 
statements.   
21. The Chairman  recalled that under agenda item 2, he did not propose to invite the Chairs to 
take the floor at the present meeting and that, with regard to agenda item 3, he intended to make only 
a brief statement.  He therefore wished to make hi s statement to update his overview of the situation, 
in the interests of transparency and to keep all participants informed.  At the informal Heads of 
Delegations meeting on 8 July, he ha d given participants a frank and, he believed, realistic assessment 
of the situation in the Doha Development Age nda (DDA) negotiations.  His statement had been 
circulated as document Job(05)/152.  He had said th en that continuing failure to turn generalized 
political support into concrete progress at the negot iating level meant that the negotiations were in 
trouble.  He had also recalled the numerous warnings  he had issued at successive TNC meetings about 
the state of play in the negotiations since the beginning of the year.  He had pointed out that Members were faced with a crisis of immobility, although there was still a slender chance of averting it.   
22. Unfortunately, his statement at the present mee ting could not be much different in substance 
from what he had said on 8 July, because the situ ation had not evolved very much.  He had the 
impression that his earlier diagnosis had been widely  shared, but the cure remained elusive and every 
day the crisis of immobility deepened. 
23. Since the 8 July meeting, he had attended an informal gathering of a number of Ministers 
hosted by the Chinese government in Dalian.  As he had informed participants on 8 July, the Ministers 
who had been in Dalian had been faced with some  key questions in the issues where progress needed 
most urgently to be made.  Minister Bo Xilai and his co-chair, Secretary John Tsang of Hong Kong 
China, had done a fine job in keeping the focus on th ese key issues.  However, he regretted to say that 
few of the answers that were needed had been fo rthcoming.  The Ministers who had been in Dalian 
had expressed their willingness to seek common ground, in particular among the various positions that 
had been set out on the market access pillar of agriculture and concerning the NAMA formula – but 
participants had not yet located that common ground, and time was running very short.   
24. In agriculture, Members stood once again in front  of a gateway issue – the structure for the 
market access commitments.  Progress was needed in all three pillars,  but the market access pillar was 
clearly where the major blockage was right now.   A broad commitment to search for middle ground 
on the market access formula had been seen, and the G20 had made a useful proposal in this respect.  
The Chairman of the Agriculture Special Session was holding intensive consultati ons in an effort to 
show progress by the end of the following week, and he urged participants to give their full backing to 
this process.   TN/C/M/19 
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 25. Similar efforts were going on in NAMA, where some useful ideas about bridging the gaps 
concerning the formula had been contributed, most recently from Pakistan.  However, as always, the 
link between progress in NAMA and that in agriculture  remained an undeniable reality.  It had so far 
operated as a brake on progress and he hoped that it could be turned into an accelerator.   
26. On S&D, the Chairman of the CTD Special S ession had been holding in tensive consultations 
over the past few weeks and had been focussing on the LDC Agreement-specific proposals.  The CTD 
Chairman was continuing with his consultations a nd there was a possibility of a certain degree of 
movement, but of course differences still existed on the possible recommendations that could be 
made.  He urged Members to show all possible flexibility in these areas in the coming days.   
27. He said it was still not quite too late to make  some worthwhile advances in these three key 
areas at least before the end of the following week.  However, this would not  happen without a greater 
willingness by participants to take the political decisi ons that were unavoidable if they were to resolve 
the current impasse.  The issues were all very well- known; participants were not short of information 
or ideas.  What they were short of was the will to mo ve beyond general statements of intent to specific 
understandings around which they could all converge. 
28. On the remaining areas of the five identified as key earlier in the year – services and rules – it 
was clear that little more by way of substantive progr ess was to be expected before the summer break.  
It was equally clear that in these areas, as in the others , this meant that there was a great deal left to be 
done in the autumn in order to have a worthwhile result at Hong Kong.   
29. Members had to stop kicking issues back a nd forth between the Geneva process and the 
political level – negotiators needed the sort of instru ctions which could resolve them.  He was glad to 
see a number of Senior Officials at the present meeting.  They had an important part to play in 
bringing the commitment of their political masters to bear on the negotiations in a more focused and effective manner.   
30. He wished to repeat what he had said at th e informal meeting on 8 July, and to remind 
delegations that the Hong Kong Ministerial was not far away.  Ambitions remained high for 
significant results across a broad range of issues by Hong Kong, and this was necessary if Members 
were to have a chance of finishing the Round in 2006.   
31. The General Council Chairman had given Member s a timely reminder at the 8 July meeting 
about the scope of the agenda they had to cover be tween now and then.  There had to be a balanced 
package in sight by the time Memb ers went to Hong Kong, and considering that more than 30 issues 
remained outstanding in agriculture alone, there wa s real cause for concern about whether this was 
achievable in the time remaining.   
32. He had said before that his finger was hovering over the alarm button.  Now he had pressed it.  
He urged all participants to hear the alarm and to act upon it.  However, lest he might sound too 
alarmist, he wished to qualify this with the following points.   
33. First, as he had observed at the Dalian meeting, Members did not lack the political will to 
move ahead and to undertake the difficult task of ta king key political decisions, but this had to be 
done soon and at the political level, because they seemed to have exhausted the possibilities at the 
technical level in some areas.  From what he had he ard at the G8 meeting, Members had to realise that 
the leaders were totally committed,  as were negotiators in Geneva, to completing the Round in 2006.  
Thus, they should lose no time and take the key political decisions right now. 
34. Second, Members had to have a basis to be able  to take these decisions.  They simply could 
not start adding more options or even try to keep all the options on the table.  From what he had heard  TN/C/M/19 
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 at Dalian, there was an understanding to move into the middle ground, although Members did not yet 
know where the middle ground lay.  Everyone was awar e of everyone else's positions, so now was the 
time to start moving towards each other.   
35. Third, Members needed to build common ground.   There remained divergences in several 
areas but in some cases he thought Members could find convergence on common ground.  Members 
had to go as far as they could before the end of July so that they could all reflect on the details and be 
ready for the post-summer vacation period.   
36. His last point was that if Members were trul y committed to what they had been saying all 
along, they still had enough time be fore the General Council meeting at the end of the month to 
address the areas of divergence.  They all knew what was needed in certain areas and still had time to 
tackle the key elements.  For exam ple, the Agriculture Ch air was looking for the key structures in the 
three pillars.  In NAMA, the Chair had identified the n eed to have at least an outline of the formula on 
the table.  Delegations all needed to give these effo rts real support and he urged them to work flat out 
in the next few days.   
37. He urged all participants to make the most of  every remaining opportunity for progress so that 
they could have a more encouraging story to tell then.   
38. The Trade Negotiations Committee took note  of the Chairman's statement.   
39. The Chairman  proposed to suspend the meeting.   
40. The Trade Negotiati ons Committee agreed  to the Chairman's proposal and adjourned .   
41. At the resumed meeting of the Trade Negotiations Committee on 28 July , the Chairman  
suggested to return to the agenda starting with agenda item 2.   
2. Reports by the Chairpersons of the Bodies Established by the TNC 
42. The Chairman  said that written reports had been circulated in the following official 
documents: 
Special Session of the Committee on Agriculture:   TN/AG/17; 
Special Session of the Council for Trade in Services   TN/S/20; 
Negotiating Group on Rules:      TN/RL/13; 
Special Session of the Committee on Trade and Development:  TN/CTD/12; Special Session of the Dispute Settlement Body:    TN/DS/12; Special Session of the Council for TRIPS:    TN/IP/13; Special Session of the Committee on Trade and Environment:  TN/TE/12; Negotiating Group on Trade Facilitation:    TN/TF/2. 
 
 
43. He noted that the Chairmen of the Agricultu re Special Session and the Negotiating Group on 
Market Access had provided written assessments of the state of play in their areas in the following 
documents: 
Agriculture Special Session:     Job(05)/126 and Job(05)/163 
Negotiating Group on Market Access:    Job(05)/147 and Addendum 1. TN/C/M/19 
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 44. The Chairman of the Special Session of the C ouncil for Services had also in the morning of 
the present meeting circulated a paper on the organisa tion of future work in the Special Session which 
was contained in the following document: 
Council for Trade in Services Special Session:    Job(05)/164  TN/C/M/19 
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45. Mr Tim Groser, Chairman of the Speci al Session of the Committee on Agriculture , said that 
his assessment should be read alongside what he  described as the foundation document – the July 
2004 Decision, WT/L/579 adopted by all Members and building on the Doha mandate and his earlier 
personal status report of 27 June 2005 in Job(05)/126.  As had been the case in his earli er status report 
of 27 June, he was basing this second assessment on three key operational negotiating principles.  
First, that progress had to continue to be made  in all three pillars of domestic support, export 
competition and market access.  Second, the nego tiations could only succeed with an incremental 
approach that sought simultaneous movement on identifiable packages of issues and third, the acquis  
of the negotiations had to remain the July 200 4 Framework, adopted by Members, which had 
elaborated in some detail the Doha mandate.  This  fully protected all Members positions on issues, 
including various aspects of the crucial issue of S&D in favour of developing countries, where limited movement had been possible in the last 12 months.   
46. The intensive discussions at both political and o fficial level since his personal assessment of 
June, had not changed in any deep sense his underl ying thinking on the key questions he had asked 
the membership to address – they had not gone away simply because clear guidance had not yet been 
provided.  However, the discussions that had occu rred in the previous month had certainly brought 
more clearly into sight some key political trade-offs  that were not so clear to him or the Members a 
month ago.   
47. The agriculture negotiations were stalled and th ere was no way to conceal that reality.  But a 
set of clear political decisions – none of them e asy, but at least Members could now more readily 
identify the essential decisions – could restart this negotiation and still pave the way for a successful 
Ministerial meeting in December.  The purpose of  his assessment was to try and highlight those 
matters in a very focused way.  Regrettably, the intensive consultations ove r the last 12 months had 
shown that Members had to settle some central matt ers before they could address effectively a much 
broader range of issues of deep concern to them.   
48. For reasons he had spelled out in his earlier as sessment that the export competition pillar was 
clearly the most advanced pillar of the negotia tion precisely because of the clarity of some key 
political decisions taken earlier.  Members now ne eded, and the sooner the better, some additional 
building blocks in parallel commitments.  With respect to state tradin g exporting entities(STEs), 
Members needed to agree quickly on a more targ eted definition of what precisely were the new 
disciplines on the matter of subsidies, government  financing and underwriting of losses and the 
institutions also of primary concern.  On food aid,  he regretted to report that the underlying concerns 
of many developing countries which he had referred to a month ago, a bout the practical effects of any 
new disciplines still needed to be addressed.  He still saw value in advancing the understanding of 
what might constitute genuine emergency food aid.  This could facilitate the work in defining the 
operational disciplines on commercial displacement.   
49. A negotiating approach based on finding a reas onable way forward in this area would then 
permit a sharper focus in the autumn on what was cl early the over-arching issue in this pillar – the 
schedule and modalities for phasing out all forms of export subsidies and how this might take account 
of the need for some coherence with internal refo rm steps of Members.  This was a very political 
matter and of major commercial significance.  Ministers needed to be put in a position where the centre of the matter was the focus of their attention.   
50. Turning to domestic support, his earlier assess ment had provided a re asonably comprehensive 
view of the key issues to be addressed in this pilla r.  He could now see more clearly, thanks to the 
intensive discussions in the previous month, what were the first order ques tions to be settled.  If 
Members were to continue with an incremental ap proach in this pillar, two decisions were now TN/C/M/19 
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 required.  In his view, however, such decisions would be taken only in the context of a set of 
decisions to unblock the market access formula.  This was consistent with his definition of an 
incremental approach, which sought simultaneous m ovement on identifiable packages of issues.  A 
decision – not a discussion – was required on where the three largest users of the Amber Box fell into 
the tiered formula.  He saw two possible solutions, may be others saw more.  But it was not a matter 
where any further technical work was needed.  He was not prepared to describe the two solutions he 
could see, because he had accepted good advice that sometimes stating the obvious could finally 
complicate Members adjusting their positions to th e dynamic of the negotiations.  The rationale for 
the Blue Box was that it was a half-way house be tween highly trade and pr oduction distorting Amber 
Box payments and the low or minimally trade a nd production distorting payments that properly met 
the rigorous criteria of the Green Box.  Decisions on the disciplines to apply on Blue Box payments 
that would reinforce that reform objective were now required.   
51. With respect to the Green Box, he could only  repeat the earlier view in his assessment a 
month ago.  There was the basis of a political deal whereby existing heavy users of Green Box 
payments examined sympathetically some propo sals for clarifying the criteria that would not 
undermine their reforms and at the same time, the me mbership agreed that it would be desirable to 
develop some new provisions that would meet the realities of developing country agriculture but still 
clearly subject to and consistent with, as the pro ponents of these ideas had made clear repeatedly, the 
key test that such payments would meet the fundament al test of at most minimal trade-distortion.   
52. Such a broad political direction to experts to pursue the middle ground here might then allow 
the experts to develop some real incremental progress in the review and clarification of the Green 
Box.   
53. Market access was by far the most complex ma tter and would still require more time than 
other pillars to build convergence.  Pursuing a step  by step approach to building up the structure of 
modalities meant identifying sets of issues that, fo r political reasons alone, and not excluding other 
reasons of an economic nature, need ed to be settled at the same time  without crossing over to the fatal 
mistake of trying to settle too much at once.  It was a matter of making responsible judgements, given 
that the argument could always be made that  everything was linked to everything else.   
54. He was grateful to the G20 in providing a comp rehensive proposal providing their answers to 
the four key questions he had posed in the first asse ssment a month ago.  He noted in particular that 
the principle of S&D in favour of developing count ries was an integral part of this proposal.   
55. Following guidance from many Members at both official and political level, he had used the 
G20 proposal as a starting point for the most recent consultations.  Some Members had reservations 
about aspects of the G20 comprehensive market ac cess proposal, but it was clear that this approach 
was a constructive initiative to map out the middle gr ound and had provided others with a platform to 
raise associated ideas, including the possibility of in troducing some degree of additional progressivity 
into the formula.  It was also notable that cert ain Members with the greatest difficulties in this area 
had found the related discussion on sensitive products the most useful yet.  Although any immediate 
solution was not apparent, this was hardly surprisi ng, given its relationship to the tariff formula. 
56. It was evident from discussions based on the G 20 proposal that a key issue was whether there 
was to be any flexibility within the formula or a ll such flexibilities would be provided in some other 
way.  Members with exporter interests at the forefront  of their attention were not going to give a blank 
cheque on flexibilities.  He said this was clear to him as the Chair and he had to state it.  With respect 
to providing any flexibility within the formula, th ere would therefore need to be a high level of 
specificity on what such flexibilities would be.    TN/C/M/19 
 Page 11 
 
 
 57. Additionally, since any such flexibility by its very nature, reduced the market opening for 
some products and on the basis of a plain reading of the framework as it stood, avoided the tariff rate quota (TRQ) expansion envisaged for sensitive products , exporters would expect to see a more robust 
formula agreed upon.  It also needed to be borne in mind that, without any such constrained flexibility 
at all in the formula, it would be even more difficu lt for Members with difficulties in this area to agree 
to a higher level of ambition when the moment  arrived to define the size of the cuts.  
58. He was very much aware that this highly fo cussed commentary on the previous few weeks’ 
market access discussions had not taken forward Me mbers thinking on, for example, the types of 
indicators that might be agreed to give operati onal force to the criteria established for Special 
Products in the July Framework, how the fullest lib eralisation for Tropical Products, the treatment of 
recently acceding members or how Members might address preference erosion, might be advanced.  
He repeated his strong concern that these and other i ssues of great interest to many Members, could 
not be left to one side for too long and an attempt had to be made to rush through some fix on these 
complex matters.  It was imperative therefore that the above key elements relating to the structure of 
the market access pillar be settle d as quickly as possible.   
59. Work in the Sub-Committee on Cotton with respect  to the development track seemed finally 
to be producing a more focussed effort by the donor countries and not just with respect to the cotton 
proponent countries.  However, the urgent matter rela ted to the current sharp price decline remained a 
matter of acute concern, particularly for those de veloping country cotton producers with a very high 
dependence on the world market.  He wished to recall that some proponent countries were exporting 
90 per cent of their production.   
60. With respect to the trade track, representatives of cotton producing developing countries with 
whom he had consulted closely in recent weeks w ould have seen that some decisions on the above set 
of issues in all three pillars were crucial to a dvancing the trade track of the work of the Sub-
Committee on Cotton.   
61. He said he could add little to what he had sai d a month ago.  The longer it took to provide 
answers to such core concerns, the more difficult it would be to envisage reaching agreement at the 
Hong Kong Ministerial Meeting on the agreed objec tive of an ambitious, expeditious and specific 
treatment of cotton within the agriculture negotia tions.  Members needed to bear this additional 
dimension very much in mind as they reflected on this assessment of the state of the agriculture 
negotiations.   
62. Ambassador Jóhannesson (Iceland), Chairman of the Negotiating Group on Market Access,
 
said that his written supplement to his 8 July report  had been circulated to Members and the reports 
spoke for themselves.  He therefore had little to ad d.  However, he wished to make a couple of 
comments.  The Group had been working intensively in the previous weeks and although it did not achieve the objectives it had set in particular w ith regard to a common understanding on the basic 
approach of the formula, it was his conviction that the Group had come a long way.  In his opinion, 
the way forward was clear and he had reflected on that in his report.  He wished to highlight one point 
in his supplement to this effect.  The Group ha d until the present tended to focus on structure and 
principles.  In his opinion, it was time to add the el ement of practicality.  It was his belief that this 
would be helpful for Members to move forward becau se at the end of the day what really counted was 
not the structure of the formula but the results.   
61. Ambassador Jara (Chile), Chairman of th e Special Session of the Council for Trade in 
Services , said that he had made a very extensive repor t which he would not go into.  Since then, his 
group had worked on the organization of future work  and a note by the Chairman on this had been 
issued in Job(05)/164.  This had been a result of  several consultations held because his group had a 
number of issues or items to consider beginning very early in the month of September.  These TN/C/M/19 
Page 12  
 
 included identification of expectations by Members,  intensification of the request-offer process, the 
possible use of complimentary approaches, modalities for LDCs; Category II proposals on S&D and 
targeted technical assistance.  There might be other items, but these were the ones that had so far been 
identified.  The document contained a tentative schedul e of meetings foreseen in this respect.  This 
would allow Members to use part of their vacation to reflect on above-mentioned matters and be fully 
prepared to engage in very intensive work as of be ginning of September.  The group had to start work 
on the kind of package that it wished to deliver for the Hong Kong Ministerial.      63. Ambassador Valles Galmés (Uruguay), Chai rman of the Negotiating Group on Rules
, said 
that he had submitted to the TNC a lengthy writte n report which had been prepared under his sole 
responsibility.  It was not a negotiated report by the Group.  As all delegations  had had sufficient time 
to read this report he wished to highlight some issues which he believed deserved special 
consideration especially within the context of what  Members were discussing at the present meeting 
and what had been discussed at the last session of his Group.  He would focus on anti-dumping and 
subsidies, including fisheries subsidies, as it was in these sectors that he had heard some concerns 
expressed in the previous days.   
64. First, he wished to emphasize the largely shared  view of all participants that negotiations on 
rules played a fundamental role in the DDA.  It was quite clear for him as Chairman, just like for all 
participants, that the negotiations on rules, coul d and had to contribute so as to achieve balanced 
results in this Round.  The idea that negotiations on rules played a fundamental role for the general 
balance of the Round had gained im portance and had become a reality with all participants.  He had 
therefore explained this in detail in his report.  The process as he saw it, up until the Ministerial in 
Hong Kong and afterwards needed substantive inte nsification of the negotiating process which would 
include and focus on considering precise proposals of texts.  This would call for plurilateral 
consultations which he would chair.  His Group woul d meet as frequently as necessary so that all the 
issues could be examined in depth so that the t echnical and political viabilit y could be addressed.  He 
asked what this process would offer.  In his opini on, this process would enable participants and the 
Chair to judge the areas where progress would be po ssible and what kind of improvement would be 
acceptable for different Members.  That was what would give Members a solid basis for the final stage of this Round.   
65. He was aware that for some participants this plan of action at first sight, might seem 
insufficient.  As Chairman, he would produce very s oon a text or at the very least, move forward in 
the process, so as to immediately id entify the specific issues which w ould have to be considered in 
these negotiations and indicate the type of improveme nts that could be expected in each one of the 
areas.  He knew that those Members who were pr oposing alternatives were full of good will.  He 
would be the first one happy if at Hong Kong Memb ers defined a list of issues that they could work 
on and in which results should be achieved.  Implicit ly they would also be identifying which issues 
they would not be dealing with.  In this way, Memb ers would be able to complete the year and experts 
would have to define the details which would en able Members achieve the results.  Unfortunately, 
there were good reasons to believe that if the Gr oup tried now to establish such a list, it would be 
confronted with serious risks and that was precisel y what he had indicated in the written report.  His 
responsibility was to mention the risks because Member s had very little time left and a mistake in the 
strategy of the procedure adopted, could lead to i rreparable loss of time and most probably of the 
negotiating climate. 
66. He wished to identify some intr icate features which were specific to the negotiations on rules.  
It would be imprudent on his behalf not to mention these features when carrying out the analysis at the present meeting.  First, this was a negotiati on which was very complex and its complexity was 
unique because it did cover a multitude of specific issues that had already been dealt with in detail in 
the existing Agreements.  In this area generalitie s were not sufficient; they were inappropriate.  
Details determined everything and that was precisely where the problem lay.  It was extremely  TN/C/M/19 
 Page 13 
 
 
 difficult to agree on what aspects of the existing Agreements to improve without knowing how to go 
about this improvement.   
67. Secondly he had noted that there were very few inte rnal trade-offs in this area.  There were no 
three pillars with varying interests, depending on the Members.  There were  no specific trade-offs 
between different sectors or products as in the market access negotiations.   
68. Even if this was not a one way street, the traffic flowed very strongly in one single direction.  
Although all the areas of negotiation were interlinked,  the external links – the dependency of progress 
made in rules with other areas of  negotiations, was a feature which pe rtained merely to this Group.  
He asked what alternatives were realistically possi ble in the light of these features of the negotiating 
group.  What were the courses of action that we re realistically possible in light of these 
considerations?  Could a list of issues and results th at could be obtained on those issues be promptly 
identified?  He pointed out that at the present time  the scope of the work in the Group was too broad 
and it risked diffusing the Group's efforts.  The Gr oup had far too many issues before it and it would 
have to narrow the list at some point.  The ques tion was whether this could be done at the present 
time. 
69. Many participants, most of whom had ensured th at rules was on the negotiating agenda of the 
current round, had continued to advance significan t new issues for consideration in the Group.  He 
could not artificially close the list of issues at present because many proponents might not accept  such efforts by him.  At the same time, any list of  issues implied an understanding to achieve results 
on those issues.  While all participants had been prepared to discuss any issue, this openness to 
negotiate could in his view be jeopardized if it implied predetermined results on those issues.  
Participants might not agree to accept results on issues of interest to others without a clear 
understanding either that their own issues would also  be satisfactorily addressed or at a minimum that 
other issues would be taken off the table.   
70. If participants could agree to allow him at this stage to decide which issues should be part of 
final results in the rules area, he would be w illing to do so.  However, this would require as a 
precondition that they were prepared to turn ove r to their Chairman the responsibility of deciding 
which issues would be reflected in the final results  of the rules negotiations and by implication which 
issues were not.   
71. He said that given the lack of internal trade-o ffs and the less than promising state of work in 
other areas, it was not realistic to expect in the imme diate future that participants would agree on, nor 
that he could impose a list of issues to be addres sed in the negotiations – much less decide on the 
directions or results on these issues in isolation from the broader results in the Round.  Rather, the 
Group had to continue to work in tensively and to engage openly.  These intensive discussions would 
help participants to all understand where support was broad and where it was narrow, how deep the 
changes could be in a given area and how as a prac tical matter such changes might be expressed as 
concrete changes to the relevant Agreements.  In  concluding, he said that in the interest of a 
productive discussion, he would appreciate delegations addressing not only where they wished the 
Group to go and what they wished it to achieve, but mo re concretely to give him a hint on how they 
believed the Group  could best get there.   
72. Ambassador Noor (Malaysia), Chairman of  the Negotiating Group on Trade Facilitation
, said 
that in addition to his written report to the TNC on 14 July in document TN/TF/2, he wished to say a 
few words on the work that had been accomplished at the recent meeting of the Group earlier in the 
week.  A number of new proposals had been discu ssed on various elements of the Group's mandate 
with the contributions now having been received on th e third objective of the negotiations relating to 
effective cooperation within customs or any ot her appropriate authorities on trade facilitation and 
trade compliance issues. TN/C/M/19 
Page 14  
 
 73. The Group had had a good exchange on technical assistance and capacity building with 
delegations advancing the discussions on the three areas of nature and priorities, inventory of 
measures and coordination.  In addressing those ite ms, the Group had benefited from a very useful 
contribution by the African Group.  Members also  endorsed two Secretariat tools that had been 
prepared in support of this work. 
74. The Group had agreed that future work on the proposals that have been presented by 
Members would be based on a compilation document issued by the Secretariat.  The Group also agreed to have a meeting scheduled for the second semester of this year. 
75. Mr. Ismail (South Africa), Chairman of the Special Session of the Committee on Trade and 
Development , said his written report TN/CTD/12 was availabl e to delegations at the present meeting.  
As he had indicated in his report, the Special Session was not in a position to make specific 
recommendations on any of the Agreement-specific proposals it had been entrusted to consider.  
During the previous few months, the Special Session had worked intensely on the five LDC Agreement-specific proposals that Members had prioritized.  During the present time and particularly in the previous few weeks, Members had been ab le to significantly narrow the wide divergences in 
their original positions and had made significant pr ogress in building convergence.  He was confident 
that in the months ahead and the time available after the summer break, the group would be in a 
position to build on the accumulation of creative sugg estions made by various Members to help in 
bridging existing gaps and forging consensus on these proposals. 
76. With regard to the group's future work and the road to Hong Kong, he intended to report to 
the General Council the next day that while signi ficant progress had been made on the Agreement-
specific proposals tabled by the LD Cs, the Special Session would need to continue to work on the 
remaining Agreement-specific proposals and report to the General Council with clear 
recommendations for a decision by the Hong Kong Mi nisterial Conference.  Secondly, the Special 
Session would also need to continue  to monitor and coordinate its efforts with that of the negotiating 
groups and other WTO bodies to whom Category II proposals had been referred by the General 
Council.  Thirdly, as had been mandated by the July 2004 Decision, the Special Session should also 
continue within the parameters of the Doha manda te, to address all other outstanding work, including 
on the cross-cutting issues, the monitoring mechanis m and the incorporation of S&D treatment into 
the architecture of WTO rules, as referred to in doc ument TN/CTD/7 and report,  as appropriate, to the 
General Council. 
77. He now wished to share some of his personal re flections.  Firstly, he thanked the membership 
and extend his deepest gratitude and appreciation fo r the tremendous effort they had made in the 
previous few months.  A large number of delega tions had remained intensely engaged in the 
negotiations in the previous few months and had co ntributed constructively to the many efforts the 
group had made to build bridges and narrow the gaps in existing positions of members.   
78. Secondly, he believed that all participants had taken back from this process many insights on 
the needs, interests and concerns of LDCs and other Members.  He urged all participants to reflect on 
these as they consulted with their stakeholders  and constituencies and prepared for the ongoing 
negotiations in the fall.  LDCs too should have learnt many lessons about how to strengthen their 
negotiating capacity and build on the creative energy of Members to advance their interests and build 
consensus.   
79. Thirdly, as the group had struggled to build the package of the five proposals that the LDCs 
had identified, it had become clear that an ag reement on these proposals would not be for free, 
especially if it was to be meaningful.  A meaningful  package would create some sacrifice even if this 
was relatively insignificant, and some discomfort for different- groups of Members, both large and  TN/C/M/19 
 Page 15 
 
 
 small, developed and deve loping.  However, if Members were to succeed, they would all need to 
move from their comfort zones and be prepared to make some sacrifices. 
80. Fourthly, the outcome of this small sacrific e that Members were required to make could 
create the spirit of solidarity that could be built to  enable them to achieve success in Hong Kong and 
at the conclusion of the Round.  The LDCs had stat ed that they would be encouraged to make the 
sacrifices that they would need to in support of an ambitious outcome in other areas of the 
negotiations, if those Members that stood poised to gain from an ambitious outcome supported a 
meaningful package of measures for LDCs to enable  them to also make some gains from the Round. 
81. Fifthly, as to the group's future work, he urged Members to make every effort to frontload the 
S&D proposals – especially those prioritized by LD Cs and not backload them.  These proposals could 
not be solved in the last week before Hong Kong.  Members would need sufficient time to consult and 
carefully consider the proposed cha nges to the texts that they need ed to make.  Furthermore, he 
believed that the earliest possible delivery of this package of proposals to LDCs would create a more conducive atmosphere for the negotiations in ot her areas.  The group had missed a valuable 
opportunity to deliver this time and should not miss the next one too. 
82. The Chairman
 thanked the Chairs for their strenuous effo rts and the hard work they had put in 
to advance the negotiations in thei r individual areas.  He was most grateful to them for the dedication 
they had shown in undertaking what had clearly been  rather daunting work on behalf of all Members. 
83. The Trade Negotiations Committee took note  of the reports by the Chairpersons of the bodies 
established by it. 
3. Report by Chairman. 
84. The Chairman  said that his full written report to the General Council would be circulated to 
all participants in the three official languages in  the course of the meeting in document TN/C/5.  He 
wished to underline that this report was not intended to be a document for negotiation or for 
discussion in its own right.  He was issuing this report on his own responsibility as TNC Chairman as 
an aid to Members' reflection during the summer and to help provide a focus for the intensive work 
which would be ahead of Members when they returned  in the autumn.  He hoped that it would help 
Members along the critical path to Hong Kong.  He  would not read the report in the General Council 
since it was some 15 pages long, but he would draw on it in order to give his overall assessment of 
where Members currently stood in  the negotiations under the TNC and his views about the key 
challenges ahead.  What he would say the next day would be very much along the lines of the comments he was going to make at the present mee ting, although of course he would be listening 
carefully to Members' views.   
85. The TNC had heard from the respective Chairs  their updated assessments of where Members 
had got to, including in the three areas where intens ive work had continued since the start of the TNC 
meeting the previous week.  The picture remained a mixed one overall.  There had been progress, but 
Members were clearly far from the kind of progress th ey would all have liked to have achieved by the 
end of July.  Nonetheless, there had been cons tructive engagement and some positive signals and 
Members had narrowed differences, even if they had not yet resolved them.   
86. In agriculture, it had not proved possible so fa r to resolve the outstanding major difficulties, 
particularly in the market access pillar, but also in domestic support.  Nonetheless, some useful further 
work had been done and it was also certainly true that the main outstanding issues on which decisions 
were urgently needed had been  more clearly identified.   TN/C/M/19 
Page 16  
 
 87. In NAMA, some useful additional progress ha d been made on issues concerning the formula 
and the treatment of unbound tariffs, but here too, it was clear that Members did not have major 
decisions yet.   
88. In the work on S&D, despite some positive si gnals concerning the LDC Agreement-specific 
proposals, it had not been possible to harvest a solution now.  Some very good progress had been 
made, however, and he hoped that the work on th ese proposals, as well as the others, would move 
ahead rapidly in the autumn. 
89. He would sum up the situation as disappointing but not disastrous.  Much substantive work 
had been done over the last few months.  Members were finishing the intensive work in the month 
without major breakthroughs but with a much sharper sense of the key issues for urgent decision and 
the links between them.  Members were also finish ing the month with a renewed sense of the absolute 
necessity to resolve these issues  rapidly if their essential ambitions for Hong Kong were to be 
realized.  The situation Members were in made Hong Kong harder but not impossible.  He believed 
Members had seen a renewed commitment on all sides to realize their ambitions. 
90. Disappointment had to be converted immediately into determination.  He thought he had seen 
that determination at the present meeting.  But Members should not be in any doubt – the alarm he 
had sounded earlier in July was still ringing, and he urge d everyone to hear the warning.  It had to be a 
real wake-up call for all participants. 
91. If the necessary breakthroughs were not forthcom ing early in the autumn, the possibility of 
the substantive results at Hong Kong which were ess ential to conclude the Round would be inevitably 
put into jeopardy.  But the strong commitment to the Round from the highest political levels 
underpinned Member's work and made failure unthink able.  The road of Members' might be a hard 
one, but it had to lead to a successful conclusion.   
92. In his report, he had set out some key issues that he believed were absolutely necessary to 
resolve urgently in order to unlock progress not only in the areas concerned, but also across the 
broader range of the negotiations.  This was far fro m being an exhaustive list of the elements that 
would have to go into a balanced package for Hong  Kong, but it was an attempt to help Members 
focus on the most urgent of them.   
93. He also underlined the need for the developmen t dimension to remain at centre stage in all 
areas.  Members had to deliver on the legitimate expect ations of developing countries for this Round.   
94. Looking to the work ahead, all participants had to make the most productive use possible of 
the very short time remaining in which to prepare th e Ministerial.  The work also had to be organized 
in a coherent, flexible and effective way.  In cons idering the critical path to Hong Kong in his report, 
he had also given his views on how this could be done.  His main point was that substance had to 
drive process, not vice versa.  The best process in th e world would result in failure if there was not a 
shared willingness to reach convergence on substantive issues.  He urged all Members, therefore, not 
to see the critical path to Hong Kong in terms of the number, location or format of meetings at 
whatever level, but instead to keep their attenti on fixed firmly on what needed to be done and the 
most effective way to do it.  This would mean keeping a flexible and pragmatic approach to the 
negotiating processes, which would need to make  full use of all possibilities for progress, while 
keeping fully in mind the principles of  transparency and inclusiveness.   
95. Implementing a substance-driven process required a close and continuing review of progress 
and rapid corrective action where necessary.  He sugg ested that appropriate checkpoints might need to 
be set along the three-month period before the Minister ial.  What form these might take and at what 
level they might be convened was for further cons ideration.  However, they should not become  TN/C/M/19 
 Page 17 
 
 
 deadlines in themselves, but rather reality check s of progress made along a continuum towards Hong 
Kong.   
96. He believed that the first such checkpoint shou ld be no later than mid-October.  By then 
Members should expect to have reac hed, or be very close to reachi ng, agreement on the key strategic 
issues he had identified in his report.  He also belie ved that as far as possible this important exercise, 
and indeed all of the remaining preparatory work for Hong Kong, should take place in Geneva, where 
the main negotiating forum was.  Meetings in other locations had an undeniable value, but he had seen 
that they could also involve costs in terms of res ources, time and transparency.  Members had to also 
avoid the disconnects among different layers of negotiation that he had often referred to.   
97. As he had said before, what Members needed urge ntly was not just a change of gear in these 
negotiations but also a change of attitude and a pproach.  The time for identifying options was gone; 
the time for choosing among them was here.  This called for leadership to wards concrete, specific 
results and frank dialogue.  There was an urgent ne ed in most negotiating areas to move rapidly to 
text-based discussions where everyone was work ing from a common base rather than numerous 
competing ones.  He urged particip ants to engage directly with each other to produce such texts, not 
wait for Chairs to work miracles.   
98. The intensive work should start from early Septem ber.  But August should not be wasted – it 
should be used to prepare the ground for decisions an d to intensify the network of informal contacts 
among Ministers and negotiators that was essential to progress.   
99. This was his assessment of the situation and a preview of the suggestions he was making in 
his report.  He had aimed to provide an honest , frank assessment.  He believed this was what 
Members needed right now.  He had also been as forward looking as possible, and the suggestions he 
had made were offered in a spirit of maintainin g the ambitions all Members had for the Round and 
which he would continue to support in every way possible.   
100. The Trade Negotiations Committee took note  of the report by the Chairman.   
4. Statements by participants 
101. Most delegations that took the floor thanked th e Director-General for his leadership in the 
Doha Round and wished him well in his new position as Secretary General of UNCTAD.  Similarly, 
most delegations that spoke thanke d the negotiating Chairs for their efforts to make progress in the 
negotiations.   
102. The representative of Brazil , on behalf of the G20 , thanked the Chairman of the Special 
Session of the Committee on Agriculture for his outsta nding work and in doing his best in order for 
Members to achieve meaningful results.  Unfortunate ly results continued to elude Members.  No one 
was encouraged by the current state of affairs in  the agriculture negotiations.  Participants would 
certainly need a lot of impetus and political commitment when they resumed negotiations in 
September and the G20 agreed with th e recommendations of the Chairman.   
103. He said the G20 had taken note of the report of the Agriculture Chair although there might be 
differences of opinion on certain points.  It would make a more detailed assessment of the report that 
had been circulated in the morning of the presen t meeting.  However, the G20 believed that the 
Agriculture Chairman had made an important c ontribution to the process by presenting a faithful 
factual report of the state of play covering the th ree pillars, with the Doha mandate and the July 
Framework as the foundation.  Having led the process and having listened to every single player, he 
was in the best position to identify the crucial bo ttlenecks of the negotiation and the reasons for the 
lack of more substantive progress.  By correctly id entifying the causes for this state of affairs and the TN/C/M/19 
Page 18  
 
 key issues where further work was required, his report should help Members to jumpstart the 
agriculture engine in the fall and thus contribut e substantively by drawing out the necessary political 
decisions to a good outcome in Hong Kong.   
104. In their overall assessment Members had to be as objective as possible.  Members had not 
reached the expected results in July.  This did not mean that they could not retrieve lost ground and 
maintain their goals.  But it was a clear indication that things were not moving as expected and this 
should instil in them an increased sense of urgency,  what the Chairman had referred to as a wake up 
call.  The G20 felt that this was needed.  It should prompt Members to start working early in September well prepared, with full negotiating capac ity as well as political willingness.  The situation 
was critical and should not give way to complacency.  The work done so far would not have been in 
vain if Members could take it as a platform for fu rther negotiations.  Member s had started to lay the 
ground for the decision-making needed in the second semester.  Too many decisions might have been 
postponed but the level of ambition of the Round rema ined intact.  The expectation of G20 for Hong 
Kong was still for an agreement on modalities.  It wa s confident that with the necessary political will 
this could be done.   
105. The G20 remained committed to the Doha manda te and was fully prepared to maintain a 
constructive and positive approach to the negotiations.  The G20 had presented proposals in writing in 
all three pillars.  It had been working in a transpar ent way.  The G20 proposals which remained on the 
table were a reflection of an exercise in consensus building through the accommodation of the 
different interests within the Group as they struck a balance between offensive a nd defensive interests.  
It had been widely recognized that the G20 pr oposals constituted a genuine middle ground.  They 
were technically consistent and had provided a basic structure on wh ich to make progress and to build 
consensus.   
106. The G20 remained open to dialogue and had always  been ready to engage with other groups 
so as to achieve the common goals of moving these  negotiations forward taking into full account the 
legitimate development concerns.  This being a de velopment round, it had to deliver a substantive 
development outcome.  The G20 expected the de veloped partners to share this idea.   
107. Notwithstanding the discussions in Dalian, Members were at a delicate juncture.  In order to 
restore the momentum, they needed  to accelerate the pace of the negotiations early in September and 
not treat the process in a business-as-usual manner.  Members needed to advance the negotiations in 
all the three pillars as had been recommended by th e Agriculture Chairman in his report and take 
advantage of the positive linkages between them.  The G20 would continue to work taking the 
Framework as a basis.   
108. Although the flexible format of informal and formal meetings had proven to be productive it 
could still be improved in  terms of transparency.  It was paramount that Members stepped up 
negotiations under a bottom-up approach.  The G20 hoped this method of work would engender the 
necessary momentum in the negotiations.   
109. The G20 would be holding its next Ministerial m eeting in September in Pakistan.  This would 
be an important occasion for the Group to assess the situation and prepare ground for the lead up to 
Hong Kong.  The G20 had put its cards in the centre of the negotiating table a nd it was time for others 
to do the same.   
110. The representative of Egypt
, on behalf of the African Group , said that Members were all 
aware of the great importance that the African Grou p attached to the outcome of the Doha Round.  
The African continent looked at this developmen t agenda as a possible hallmark through which it 
might attain a turning point to the future of  African economies.  The unprecedented number of 
initiatives taken recently by the international commun ity, under different venues, in favour of African  TN/C/M/19 
 Page 19 
 
 
 development, gave further impetus for reaching m eaningful outcomes supporting the interests of the 
continent.   
111. At this stage, at the end of July, when Me mbers were supposed to have achieved the first 
approximation, they found that limited convergence had been established in most negotiating tracks.  
It might be a little early to conclude that Members were in a crisis, or convey a pessimist opinion.  
Indeed, all Members knew from the outset that the task at hand was quite complex and difficult to 
achieve.  Nevertheless, they all had worked hard an d needed to maintain the momentum gained thus 
far when they came back in September.   
112. With a closer look at the developments of the negotiations, it could be argued that the 
members of the African Group had individually and collectively shown a significantly adequate level 
of flexibility and pragmatism.  While the Group rema ined committed to this same spirit, it failed to 
see its partners providing a similar level of flex ibility towards its main demands and concerns.  
Furthermore, recent consultation efforts had indicat ed that significant divergence of opinion existed 
among the major developed Members themselves and not just between the developed and developing 
Members.   
113. She wished to make some comments on the process and on substance.  On process she 
reiterated the crucial importance of transparency an d inclusiveness.  She had been informed by many 
members of the Group in its meeting at the ambass adorial level that the its representatives had not 
been invited to some of the recent consultations.  Th is might eventually lead to many problems, as it 
would be difficult to endorse the results if the Group had not taken part in all stages of negotiations.   
114. On substance, there was a pressing need to have  a closer look at the current obstacles facing 
progress to be able to set the stage for a kick off in September.   
115. Beginning with the real and main interest of the African Group, which was development, she 
said that the Group felt that the term development was losing its meaning in the course of the negotiations.  Development for the African Group w as not merely those Agreement-specific proposals 
being discussed in CTD Special Session.  Developmen t was a main integral part of all negotiating 
tracks including a meaningful package for LDCs, in addition to proper consideration of the issues of 
supply-side constraints and erosion of preference s.  On S&D, the African Group had participated 
actively in the negotiations.  The Chair had made re markable efforts to bridge the gaps in opinions 
and there had been a good starting point by agreei ng on addressing LDCs proposals first.  However, 
despite the fact that this was th e first time Members engaged in r eal negotiations, consensus could not 
be reached.  The Group believed th at a further push was needed to start again in September without 
forgetting to give due attention to the other proposals on S&D.   
116. There was no doubt that some relative progress had been made on some fronts.  For example, 
in NAMA, in the supplement that the Chair of the Negotiating Group provided to his 8 July commentary which had been circulated in docum ent Job(05)/147/Add.1, he had observed some 
movement towards convergence on Members' support for a Swiss formula as the central tariff cutting 
mechanism.  This indicated relative progress.  The African Group shared his belief if what was meant 
was support for a non-linear Swiss-type formula, with a predetermined coefficient for each Member qualified by its current average.  Convergence in NAMA was still far, but not that far away.  She 
expressed the critical importance that the Group attach ed to all elements of NAMA negotiations, some 
of which had not been included in recent cons ultations.  The African Group expected the NAMA 
Group to thoroughly resume the discussions of the diff erent elements of negotiations after the summer 
break.   
117. On trade facilitation, the Negotiation Group was making good progress.  The papers that had 
been submitted up till the present meeting reached a record of 57, in addition to numerous Job TN/C/M/19 
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 documents in less than a year.  Time would be ne eded for developing countries to digest all these 
proposals and evaluate their impacts and costs.   Thus, the period from September to Hong Kong 
should be primarily an educative one.   
118. Evidently, some relative progress had been made.  Some negotiating bodies had been 
progressing well – perhaps too well from the African poi nt of view.  These were the tracks in which 
the African Group maintained a relatively defensiv e position rather that an offensive one and where 
they expected the highest costs a nd commitments to be incurred.  On the other hand, those negotiating 
tracks in which the Group held an offensive positio n and hoped to achieve meaningful market access 
opportunities for its exporters were lagging behind or stagnating.  On agriculture for example, which 
was a track the Group attached crucial importance due to its dual offensive a nd defensive nature, little 
meaningful progress had been made, and Members n eeded to reach middle grounds by September in a 
way that was satisfactory to all and that took into consideration the concerns of African countries.  
The cotton issue was of vital importance to 32 Africa n countries and had to be tackled in a way that 
would achieve ambitious, expeditious and specific resu lts.  In this regard, the Group wished to thank 
the Agriculture Chair for the efforts he had deployed to achieve progress on this track.   
119. She reiterated the Group's attachment to the modalities it had suggested in April which had 
been endorsed by African and LDC Ministers in Ju ne.  The Group expected that after the summer 
break extensive, structured and result or iented negotiations would be conducted. 
120. On services, the Group welcomed the increased num ber of initial offers and the revised offers 
that had been tabled so far.  However, it shared the concern of the Services Chairman on their quality.  
This was particularly apparent in the sectors and modes of export interest of African Countries which 
undermined the developmental objectives of the Ge neral Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) 
and the Doha mandate.  In this respect, African countries had not only been receptive of the initial 
offers, but had demonstrated their constructive co mmitment through their increasing offers, since the 
last TNC, despite the fact that most of them  were LDCs.  She emphasized that the services 
negotiations should continue to be based on the existing mandate and negotiating guidelines.  The 
Group also called upon the Services Chair to contin ue pursuing consultations on the S&D issue and 
the implementation of LDC modalities with a view to  achieving expeditiously a meaningful outcome.   
121. She reaffirmed that Members now had a shared responsibility to collectively meet the current 
pressing challenges.  They had all agreed to la unch this round of negotiations knowing that some 
tough political choices might well be involved in the process.  The Group believed that this was the 
time for all Members to show firm political willingn ess and leadership to avoid another slowdown or 
downturn in the progress of the work of this Organi zation to which the Group assigned a great deal of 
hope in achieving economic development and prosperity.   
122. The representative of the United States
 said that all Members needed to work hard at home 
during the break to obtain negotiating instructions th at would enable them to bridge the differences 
that the Chairs had identified in their reports.  Sp eaking of work at home, he was pleased to announce 
that the U.S. House of Representatives had early in  the morning of the present meeting approved its 
Free-Trade Area Agreement(FTA) with Central America and the Dominican Republic – CAFTA which was very good news for United.States' partic ipation in the WTO negotiations.  It was a major 
victory for those in the United States who stood for furt her trade liberalization.  It put a strong wind at 
the United States' back as it moved into the intens ive negotiations in Geneva in September.  The 
United States was grateful to its partners in Central America and the Dominican Republic for 
demonstrating so clearly that free trade was a critical ingredient in development.   
123. Turning to the situation in Geneva, like others , his delegation was disappointed that Members 
had not made more progress in moving the DDA forward but he did not intend to dwell on this point.  The successful conclusion of the DDA would yiel d substantial benefits for the global economy –  TN/C/M/19 
 Page 21 
 
 
 potentially lifting 300 million people out of poverty.   For this reason, Members needed to move 
forward in September with renewed intensity, shared  responsibility and most of all, commitments to 
find compromises, especially in areas that would be  difficult for each of them.  The United States 
recognized this and accepted this task. 
124. President Bush had made the DDA and strengthe ning the WTO the centre piece of his trade 
agenda.  The United States was co mmitted to completing the negotiations before the end of 2006, in 
order to utilize its Trade Promotion Authority wh ich the United States' Congress had renewed for two 
years.   
125. He asked what each Members had to do to move in September towards success at Hong 
Kong.  Hong Kong would only succeed if it was well prepared, and provided Members set their sights 
high in terms of ambition.  In the core areas of  agriculture, NAMA and services, Members needed to 
think and act ambitiously and set a vision for th e trading system well into the next decade.   
126. On agriculture, he said that Members had to c ontinue to aim high.  This was clearly what 
President Bush had signalled when at Gleneagles he had challenged others to join the United States in 
eliminating all trade distorting domestic support.  His delegation saluted the Agriculture Chairman 
and expressed its gratitude for his outstanding effort s to build on the July 2004 Decision.  Members 
continued to face significant challenges, not the le ast of which was market access, where they had not 
yet agreed on a structure for negotiations.  This was in stark contrast to the other pillars of domestic 
support and export subsidies wher e there were structures.   
127. On market access, in previous weeks there had b een signals that all Members wanted to find a 
middle ground somewhere between the ambitions of  those who had advocated a Swiss formula and 
those who had wanted to use the approach from the Uruguay Round.  In this regard, the G20 had 
offered some useful suggestions on structure that had helped Members to focus their discussions.  The 
United States would continue to seek a consensus that would ensure improved market access for all 
products, particularly in making deeper cuts in highe r tariffs.  All of this could be done in a manner 
that built upon rather than tore down the July 2004 Decision.   
128. On domestic support, progress had been seen on the structure for reductions.  The United 
States recognized that a strong outcome on domestic support would require important changes in its 
farm programs and it was already making changes but changes could not be made by just one country.  
He said that in the United States, there was a saying that "your word is your bond."  The United States 
had made a commitment at Doha, which it had rein forced last July in the 2004 Framework and its 
participation in the agriculture talks continued to  be guided by its strong commitment to real 
agricultural reform.  For some reason, those who subsidized the most still sought reassurance with 
respect to the question of domestic support.  He wished to be clear yet again – the United States was committed to meaningful reform in domestic suppo rt measures in all countries including its own.  
This included a substantial reduction in the allo wed level of trade-distorting domestic support, 
product-specific caps on the Amber Box, a cap on partially decoupled payments under the Blue Box 
and new criteria to ensure that all countries' pa rtially decoupled support payments were less trade-
distorting than amber box payments.  The United States expected all countries to reduce trade-
distorting support in these negotiations and looked forward to the day when all trade-distorting support and tariff barriers were eliminated.   
129. He said that cotton remained a very important i ssue particularly for the United States' partners 
in Africa.  Significant progress had been recorded on two fronts: first, on development where there 
had been significant steps specifically on cotton since the last meetings in July.  He said that those 
countries most concerned about cotton had been helped more broadly by the very important steps that the United States and other G8 Members had taken related to Africa when their leaders met at Gleneagles.   TN/C/M/19 
Page 22  
 
 130. On July 20, West African Ministers issued a declaration welcoming the United States actions 
on cotton related to its agricultural trade programmes.   The United States also welcomed the most 
recent exchange that took place on the occasion of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) 
Forum, hosted by Senegal.  The United States unde rstood the importance of this issue and it would 
continue to work with its partners  for reform in this sector.   
131. The path ahead on NAMA was much clearer, given the work that had been done in the past 
several weeks.  His delegation wished to thank the NAMA Chairman for helping Members to define 
this path.  Several constructive ideas were on the ta ble.  There had been signals of flexibility from all 
sides about finding the right formula and the use of  coefficients to realize real market access 
opportunities.  Members needed quickly in Septem ber to turn these signals of convergence into 
compromises that worked for all.  Resolution of the technical issues of product coverage and ad 
valorem  equivalents (AVEs) had to also come quickly so that Members could finalize possible 
approaches on the formula and the treatment of unbound tariffs.   
132. He said the work on sectors and non-tariff barrier s (NTBs) should intensify so that by Hong 
Kong Members would have a clear direction on how each of them would table their offers in 2006 
and engage in the final negotiations.  Members need ed to build the bridges to one another to be 
ambitious, while being sensitive to one another's real needs and concerns.  The United States' 
expectations for the beginning of September was that  all Members would return to the table ready to 
find solutions. 
133. Turning to services he said that a pro-devel opment strategy required a strong network of 
services infrastructure for an economy to grow.  For this reason, the United States had been working 
with others to see how they could lift their sights on services.  The United States strongly supported 
the Services Chairman's efforts in this regard.  It  appreciated his clear delineation of organization of 
future work.   
134. As had been reflected in the Services Chair's report to the TNC there was an ambitious work 
plan for services covering market access, domestic regulation, development and to ensure that the 
good work done by the various friends groups helped Members to build up the package of 
liberalization commitments.  All Members needed to commit to engage fully on this work plan so that 
they could be assured of a robust and comprehens ive negotiating agenda for services as negotiations 
proceeded in agriculture and NAMA.  The United Stat es was encouraged by the signals that partners 
were still working on revised offers and hoped that those who had not ye t tabled revised offers did so 
before Members returned in September.   
135. On trade facilitation, the United States believed th at useful work had been done to date.  It 
was encouraged by the number of proposals on th e table and the seriousness of purpose that Members 
were demonstrating.  New alliances  were being forged and the United States was pleased that this was 
an area where LDCs had been active including in tab ling of proposals.  He said that the United States 
would work with the Trade Facilitation Chairman and others in charting a path to Hong Kong and 
beyond that would secure a very important result that would contribute to increased market access.   
136. On development, he said the most important c ontribution would be if Members succeeded in 
opening new markets in the core areas of agricu lture, NAMA and services.  This had to be the 
primary focus of Members' development efforts.  The United States thanked the CTD Special Session 
Chairman for his work in addressing the range of S& D treatment elements in the mandate particularly 
those of LDCs.  The United States looked forward to completing this work in the autumn in a way 
that enhanced the rules-based trading system.   
137.
 There had been important work on capacity building including work on improving the 
Integrated Framework and closer cooperation with the International Trade Centre in particular.   TN/C/M/19 
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 Members needed to build on that progress.  In addition to multilateral efforts regarding capacity 
building, the United States had undertaken additi onal bilateral efforts including the launch of 
President Bush's African Global Competitiveness Initia tive.  The Initiative would further the work of 
trade hubs, located in Ghana, Botswana and Kenya and also provided for an additional hub in Senegal 
to enable African economies to take advantage of the United States' AGOA programme.   
138. On rules, all the issues in this area whethe r on anti-dumping, subsidies, fish subsidies or 
regional trade agreements (RTAs) were important to Members.  There had been substantive engagement on these issues and by the time Members left Hong Kong they needed to have set the 
stage for text-based negotiations.  He said the Unite d States was prepared to do that and it presumed 
that others were as well.   
139. The representative of th e European Communities
 said that his delegation would not comment 
on the reports of the Chairman and the Chairs of negotiation groups in any detail but would give the 
European Communities' assessment of the state of the DDA negotiations and its suggestions for the 
way forward.   
140. Members were reaching one of the proverbial turning points in the DDA negotiations.  This 
vast enterprise was beginning to turn in the right direction.  One of the main problems that Members 
were collectively facing was that not all issues were turning at comparable speed in the direction of 
Hong Kong.  His delegation did not wish to over dr amatize the issue of this uneven speed.  It was 
perfectly normal that some issues at certain times advanced faster than others.  But it had to be 
ensured that the laggards caught up.  The European  Communities did not yet have the impression of 
this happening on a wide variety of issues of im portance to many or all of the membership.  The 
European Communities still believed that Members could make it for Hong Kong across the board 
provided all major participants, including itself set the example and made the difficult political 
choices between now and September, and that Members changed their working methods.   
141. Turning to agriculture, like the G20, he e xpressed his delegation's appreciation for the 
outstanding work of the Agriculture Chairman and said that Members would not have reached the 
state of progress they had without him.  But it w as indispensable to continue to push forward.  
Members had to find the right balance between the va rious interests at stake both in developed and 
developing countries, across the three pillars and rela ted issues.  Clearly this had to be done on the 
basis of the objectives of the Doha Declaration and of the July 2004 Decision, including their 
development goals.  His delegation largely agreed w ith the assessment  made by the Chairman of the 
Agriculture Special Session.  His delegation welcom ed the proposals on all three pillars from the G20 
as it sought and succeeded in steering the negotiations  towards the middle ground including the recent 
proposal on market access.  This was a good and solid basis to work on.  His delegation had 
responded by engaging in discussions in the previous days on this basis in the spirit of moving swiftly 
towards an agreed structure on ma rket access.  It believed that the G20 proposal and the movement 
that some participants including itself had made during the discussions in Geneva would serve as a 
basis for the resumption of negotiations on agricu ltural market access after the summer break.   
142. His delegation was disappointed with the virt ual lack of progress since July 2004 on trade-
distorting domestic support.  This was an issue that  had been identified in Doha and in the July 
Framework Agreement as another key issue.  Both cuts and disciplines had to be addressed.  It was 
the European Communities' feeling that little, if any,  progress had been made despite some useful and 
constructive ideas by the G20.  Some early and proba bly difficult political decisions clearly needed to 
be made in key developed countries on this, hopef ully before Members resumed in September.  
Agricultural reform was politically painful.  Th e European Communities kne w this because they had 
done it and were in the process of continuing further substantive reform of the sector.  The European 
Communities had carried out the reforms largely because it was a worthy objective in itself but also as 
an advanced contribution to the DDA where it was pr epared to bind the results of its reform.  The TN/C/M/19 
Page 24  
 
 European Communities had not asked anyone else to pa y nor had it asked others to reform first or to 
open their markets in exchange.  Reform was long overdue in many countries.  It had to be done for its own sake and not be linked to  progress or payment by othe rs in this or other areas. 
143. On export competition, much needed to be done .  Limited progress on e xport credits had been 
seen, but very little, if any, on STEs and commercia lly motivated food aid.  His delegation agreed 
with the Agriculture Chair about the acute concern and urgency regarding cotton.    
144. He said that Members should follow the thrust of  the Agriculture Chair's report for work after 
August.  Members needed, as had been stated in th e Framework Agreement, to cover all issues laid 
down in the Agreement.  Although much remained to  be done, with the necessary political will on all 
sides Members could still achieve a comprehensive and balanced result in time for Hong Kong.   
145. On NAMA his delegation welcomed the Chairman 's report including the recent addendum.  
This was a negotiation that needed ambition.  The lowest common denominator could not fulfil the diverse interests of Members in this area.  There had to be gains for all.  The European Communities 
aimed for real new market access for its exporters and so did developing countries who needed access 
not only to developed country markets – and he sai d here the European Comm unities was prepared to 
make a very large contribution – but also to the markets of other developing countries.   
146. A lot of hard and technical work had been done since the July 2004 Decision.  What was 
needed was agreement on the essential economic and political features of a NAMA deal.  These were 
not complicated and required first, real new market access for all Members with the largest opportunities being offered to LDCs, second, develope d countries had to do the most and developing 
countries less, third, the poorer developing countries and in particular LDCs and others in a similar 
situation should not be asked to make any ta riff reductions, fourth, developing countries who had 
made efforts to open their mark ets should see recognition of this and fifth, both here and in 
agriculture, Members should agree at Hong Kong on tariff and quota free access for LDCs to all 
developed country markets.   
147. The key question was where Members would start in September.  His delegation hoped that 
this would be on the basis of one or the other of the Swiss formula proposals that had seemed to have 
attracted large support.   
148. There were several other importa nt issues including preference erosion, NTBs etc.  These 
issues could not and would not be neglected but the starting point remained the tariff cutting formula and its impact on different participants.  His de legation would have wished to see agreement on the 
formula at the present meeting.  The formula s hould be simple, its consequences easy to assess and 
should not create disparities between countries with the same levels of development.  He said this was 
why the European Communities had proposed a simple  Swiss formula with one coefficient for all 
developed countries and a higher coefficient for de veloping countries, modulated according to the 
degree and kind of additional flexib ility that each of them required.  Members had to agree on the 
structure of the formula in the autumn and other key elements of the NAMA package and fill in the 
figures by or at Hong Kong.  His delegation had heard echoes that went in the right direction and 
signals from key participants that Members might finally be getting beyond the starting blocks.   
149. On development, the Chairman of the CTD Special Session had reported on the intensive 
work over recent months in the Special Sessi on on the LDC related proposals.  The European 
Communities was disappointed that it had not been possible to reach agreement on these and to harvest them at the present time.  This would ha ve been a valuable down-payment for the LDCs.  
Members had to continue to work hard on these prop osals in the autumn, with the clear objective of 
reaching consensus by the Hong Kong Ministerial at  the very latest.  The European Communities 
would remain fully and positively engaged in this process.  He said like many others, the European  TN/C/M/19 
 Page 25 
 
 
 Communities was increasingly impatient with the de lays in responding to LDCs' calls for full duty-
free and quota-free market access for their exports.  Such a decision had to be taken at the latest by or 
at the Hong Kong Ministerial.   
150. In the services area, Members were now facing a very serious situation.  There was hardly 
any progress.  The number of revised offers still fell far short of what was needed and most of those 
submitted so far did not provide new market access oppor tunities.  Indeed, in most cases they did not 
even reflect existing levels of liberalization in  some developed countries.  This situation was 
unsustainable and had to be corrected by Hong Kong.  He said for the European Communities, 
services was crucial for the overall balance of the DDA.  At Hong Kong, Members needed to achieve 
modalities with a similar level of specificity in services as for agriculture and NAMA.  The request-
offer method of negotiating had not generated mean ingful results.  Members should now as suggested 
in the Chair's report, explore complementary appro aches to the negotiations in order to ensure that 
there was a substantive outcome in services in  the DDA.  The European Communities strongly 
encouraged the Services Chair to pur sue this work from September so that Ministers could decide in 
Hong Kong on a set of modalities.   
151. In the area of rules he focused his comme nts only on anti-dumping.  Preventing abuses of 
anti-dumping procedure was essential for preserving real  market access gains for all Members.  There 
had been some indications of intention to acceler ate and intensify work further, but Members were 
very far from reaching a critical mass in this ar ea.  Therefore, the overall assessment in the Rules 
Chairman's report was rightly somewhat downbeat.  It had focused more on the end of the Round but 
not on how Members would get there.  Hong Ko ng needed to make substantive progress on anti-
dumping.  His delegation agreed with the Chair's assessment that Hong Kong would not itself adopt a 
legal text.  Members should now seek agreement on areas where improvements were necessary, together with a clear indication of what those impr ovements should be or aim for so that at Hong 
Kong they could start text-based negotiations.   
152. On trade facilitation, his delegation appreciated  the report by the Chairman of the Negotiating 
Group which was an accurate reflection of the work carried out so far.  The European Communities 
shared the assessment that this negotiation was m oving forward slowly, quietly but in a constructive 
and consensual way.  Trade facilitation, while rema ining largely below the political radar screen was 
now recognized by most Members as being a subject that promised to bring important gains for all.   
153. He said that it was not an exaggeration to say  that the negotiations on GIs had gone nowhere.  
This was the case on the register, despite the clear commitment in the built-in agenda, on extension 
and in the context of the negotiations on agricultu re.  GIs were important for farmers engaging in 
quality production everywhere in the world.  For the European Communities, strengthening GI 
protection and giving its farmers a market instrume nt to compete was one of the very few offensive 
objectives it pursued with respect to agricultural market  access.  To avoid continued real or pretended 
misunderstanding on this, the European Communities had tabled complete proposals, in legal draft 
language.  It hoped that this would finall y allow real negotiations to start.   
154. On trade and environment, negotiations on  environmental goods had been picking up 
momentum.  For Hong Kong Members should aim to ha ve an agreed list of environmental goods for 
which special tariff treatment would apply.   
155. The representative of Japan
 said that he was disappointed that Members had failed to achieve 
the expected progress but this was not a disaster.  The Chairs' assessments had shown that the 
discussions in the previous weeks had been constr uctive and had covered issues that concerned each 
Member.  He said that limited time remained befo re the Hong Kong Ministerial and Members could 
not put to waste the emerging positive signs but rather needed to reflect upon their respective 
negotiating positions in August to prepare for the serious negotiations in September.   TN/C/M/19 
Page 26  
 
 156. While the importance of the agriculture nego tiations was undeniable in this development 
round, he pointed out that balanced progress was requ ired in the other areas of negotiations including 
NAMA, services, rules and trade facilitation.  The assessments by the Ag riculture Chairman had 
enabled constructive discussions. Although his delegati on had some concerns with the report he said 
that from September Members should use this re port as the basis for discussions.  The bottom-up 
approach was the only way to achieve convergen ce in a comprehensive manner.  He said that 
although the next Agriculture Special Session was scheduled for late September his delegation was 
prepared to engage in discussions much earlier.   
157. On NAMA he said it was unfortunate that Member s had not been able to achieve convergence 
on the formula.  However, there had been growing support for the Swiss formula.  Members needed to 
explore flexibilities for developing countries in more  concrete terms.  There seemed to be three 
guiding principles on the treatment of unbound tari ffs – 100 per cent binding, application of the 
formula and due consideration to low unbound tariff lin es.  From September his delegation wished to 
see discussions on the basis of these principles.  He emphasized the importance of discussions on the 
other issues including on the sectoral approach.   
158. He said it was disappointing that Members had not been able to reach agreement on the LDC 
proposals on S&D.  However his delegation appreciated the efforts of the CTD Special Session 
Chairman in reactivating these negotiations wh ich had stalled since Cancùn.  His delegation 
acknowledged the importance of the issue of duty-free and quota-free market access for LDCs and said that achieving progress in the area of deve lopment would create trust amongst Members.  His 
delegation would continue to partic ipate in the negotiations on this issue in a sincere manner after the 
summer break to achieve the objectives of the DDA.   
159. He expressed concern at the lack of progr ess in the services negotiations despite its 
importance as an integral part of the single unde rtaking.  He urged Members that had not submitted 
their offers to do so immediately and said it w as necessary to begin discussions on complementary 
approaches to the request-offer process.   
160. His delegation was pleased with the progress in the trade facilitation negotiations.  In 
particular it appreciated that developing-countr y Members were engaging constructively.  His 
delegation would continue to make progress on the anti-dumping negotiations on the basis of the six 
objectives proposed by the Friends of Anti-dumping Negotiations(FANS).   
161. He was pleased that forward-looking assessments had been made by the Chairs and positive 
statements by delegations that hopefully would accelerate progress from September for a successful 
Ministerial in Hong Kong.  His delegation was committed to making the utmost effort.   
162. The representative of Mexico
 said that his delegation would resist the temptation of applying 
any adjectives to the progress that  the Chairman's report and the reports of Chairs of negotiation 
bodies had described and he would avoid repeati ng his delegation's position on each and every topic 
or offering an opinion on whether or not the current situation qualified as a crisis.   
163. The fact was that what Members had achieved so  far fell short of what they had proposed and 
they would therefore have to accelerate progress in the second half of the year since the objectives for 
the Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong could no t and had not changed.  Many Members faced 
political realities that precluded any idea of a plan B.   If Hong Kong failed, there would not be time to 
set it right yet Members could not forget about this Round.  His delegation saw no point in identifying all the areas where Members needed to make progr ess by Hong Kong.  The Chairs of the negotiating 
bodies had been quite clear as to what needed to be done in orde r to lead their groups towards a 
successful outcome.    TN/C/M/19 
 Page 27 
 
 
 164. Clearly, the way Members had been negotiating was not the right one and no particular 
Member was entirely to blame.  Some Members were not in a position to undertake commitments in the short term.  Others had very specific interest s and the great majority had preferred to leave 
flexibility aside until their own demands were settle d.  However, all Members acknowledged that in 
one way or another the negotiations on agriculture  was the engine that drove all other areas.  
Substantive progress in agriculture was essential not only in making progress in the other areas but 
also in re-establishing the Organization's credibility.  This meant that in terms of responsibility for the 
success of the negotiations, some Members had a great er share than the rest.  It also meant that 
political leadership had to be accompanied by substantial concessions.   
165. It was his delegation's view that to subject progress in other areas to progress in agriculture 
and no other area was not a valid approach and wa s not good for the negotiations.  All Members had 
to contribute because they all stood to win.  With that in mind Mexico had sought to contribute to achieving understanding in a number of areas including NAMA, services, rules and dispute settlement.  It hoped that others  would follow its example.   
166. Mexico also believed that there were many areas where to hope for substantial progress was 
not realistic.  Members needed to establish rules of general application rather than encourage the use 
of exceptions.  For example S&D treatment had its  limitations when it directly affected other 
developing countries.   
167. Lastly, he wished to issue a warning about th e risk of nullifying the little progress Members 
had made in the Doha Round through negotiations in  other forums.  The discussions in the WTO were 
technical enough and sufficiently costly in political  terms to warrant going to other fora to expend 
efforts.  Members had to discuss in this house the effects that other intern ational negotiations might 
have on the rules that they had established and con tinued to agree on in the WTO and in the working 
of the multilateral trading system itself.   
168. In conclusion, he reiterated Mexico's commitment to continue to do its utmost for the success 
of the deliberations in the months to come so that in turn Hong Kong would bring the success all 
Members hoped for.  He thanked the United States for the adoption of CAFTA which he said would 
help Members to advance a free trade agenda.   
169. The representative of Singapore
 said that the previous July the WTO had confounded its 
critics and breathed life back into the DDA negotiati ons through the July Framework.  Exactly one 
year later Members were confronted with what was undoubtedly a setback to their negotiations.  
Members had set themselves the target of achieving by the end of July what they had termed first 
approximations.  This had been meant to be a prel ude to modalities in Hong Kong at the end of the 
year.  In this respect, they had not li ved up to their own expectations.   
170. Members had work hard in Geneva, particular ly the Chairmen of the various negotiating 
groups.  So had Ministers and Senior Officials.  There had been a breakthr ough on the AVE issue in 
Paris a few months ago.  But since then, Members had not made much progress.  Against this 
background, the question arose about what Members c ould expect for Hong Kong.  The fact was that 
they had postponed their work to the post-summer period and would only have about three months 
from September to the Hong Kong Ministerial Conference.  The amount of ground that they needed to cover in order to achieve a substantive outcome in Hong Kong was daunting.  In agriculture, there 
were more than 35 issues to resolve.  NAMA rema ined difficult.  Even if Members moved on these 
two core areas there was no guarantee that there would be progress on other areas such as services, 
rules and development.   
171. In this difficult and complex scenario the target of full modalities by Hong Kong was 
challenging.  The public and many non-government al organizations watching the negotiations had TN/C/M/19 
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 become pessimistic.  Certainly, the media had not been very upbeat about the future of the Doha 
Round.  His delegation believed that Members had miss ed a major opportunity to move forward.  It 
was in the nature of complex, multilateral negotiations  to face setbacks like this one.  Members had to 
look forward, not backwards.  There was still a wi ndow, albeit a very narrow one, to prove the critics 
wrong.  His delegation believed that Members still ha d the chance to do justice to the objectives of the 
Doha mandate.  The work that Members had done in the past 12 months was not pointless.  There had 
been a considerable amount of technical work whic h was an essential part of any multilateral round.  
Although no convergence had been achieved, the areas of divergence had been clearer.  This was a 
first step to bridging the divergences.   
172. In the post-summer period, Members would have  to address the areas of divergences head on.  
They would clearly need an intensive process fro m September to Hong Kong.  The key divergences 
were in agriculture.  These would have to be addressed before anything else moved.   
173. In the past one year, one fundamental i ngredient which had been missing from the 
negotiations was political will and leadership.  If H ong Kong was to set the stage for a conclusion of 
the Round in 2006, Members would need a stronger disp lay of political will and leadership in the post 
summer period.  In this respect, Ministerial i nvolvement in the run up to Hong Kong would be 
critical.  But Members should not confuse political e ngagement with mini-Ministerial meetings.  The 
issue was not whether Ministers had meetings.  The issue was whether Ministers made the hard 
decisions and trade-offs.  There was political co mmitment to conclude this round by 2006.  The 
challenge was to translate this co mmitment into tangible momentum that actually moved the process.   
174. In any round, the major players had a particular  responsibility to show leadership.  In this 
regard his delegation welcomed the va rious interventions made so far, by the major players.  They had 
struck the right tone.  Their leadership was nece ssary and had to involve some difficult sacrifices to 
give confidence to others that there would be a ge nuine give and take in the negotiations.  The world 
would be watching for signs of such leadersh ip in the DDA in the post-summer period.   
175. In conclusion, he said that this July’s outcome  was disappointing but was not an irreversible 
situation.  Members could still achieve enough by  Hong Kong to wrap up the Round in 2006.  
Members had one more chance to prove the critics wrong.  No one had any doubt that a successful 
outcome in Hong Kong was crucial for the future  and credibility of the WTO and the multilateral 
trading system. 
176. The representative of Australia
, on behalf of the Cairns Group , was disappointed that after 
twelve months of intensive effort Members had made little headway in putting flesh on the bones of 
the agriculture framework text adopted in July 2004.  The Group called on all Members to recognize 
that there could be no progress on the DDA until ke y issues of agricultural trade reform were 
adequately addressed.   
177. It was unfortunate that the high level political support for agricultural trade liberalization at 
the recent G8 summit in Scotland and by Trade Mini sters in China had failed to be translated into 
tangible progress in Geneva.  The Agriculture Chai r had identified the key issues on which decisions 
were needed soon if the Hong Kong Ministerial was to meet its objective.  But time was now 
seriously short.  For the next phase starting in Se ptember, the Cairns Group called on the majors and 
those with high levels of agricultural protection to  show leadership and work seriously with it and 
other Members to find acceptable ways forward.  Bu t any approaches had to be  consistent with the 
principle that this round had to achieve real reform of  agricultural trade.  The benefits of an ambitious 
outcome on agriculture for developing countries, in particular, could not be understated.   
178. Agriculture remained the sector that was globally  most distorted by trade barriers and other 
support measures and agricultural trade reform wa s crucial to the delivery of the Doha Round's  TN/C/M/19 
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 development and poverty-reduction goa ls.  Recent consultations had again underscored the fact that 
without progress on agriculture and agricultural mark et access in particular, Members would not be 
able to move forward on other issues, including NAMA and services.  As a first priority, Members had to return to these negotiations in early Septem ber with a renewed commitment to address the key 
issues blocking progress on market access and the development of disciplines on domestic support.  
The Cairns Group remained undeterre d in its determination to secure full modalities by Hong Kong.   
179. The Group stood ready to work cooperatively with  all other Members to ensure that they 
delivered on the Doha mandate on agriculture.  This would require s ubstantial and genuine 
improvements in market access, real and substan tial reductions in trade-distorting domestic support 
and the elimination of export subsidies.  The Cair ns Group called on other Members to work with it to 
that end.   
180. The representative of Switzerland
 said that his delegation wished to join all those who had 
expressed disappointment, but it also wished to express some hopes.  These hopes were founded on the fact that the process had improved and theref ore dialogue had developed in a way which would 
lead Members to results.   
181. He wished to make some comments on agriculture, on behalf of the G10
.  A new key word 
had appeared in Dalian, i.e. middle ground.  The onl y problem with the word was that it started where 
the extreme ended and therefore it was a very vast  field which required a lot of further additional 
movement not only in one direction.   
182. He wished to make three points of substance re lated to the Agriculture Chairman's report.  
First, the G10 agreed that the G20 had made an important contribution.  But for the G10 a 
contribution which contained capping could not be middle ground.  Such a contribution did not take 
account of the differences in tariff structures as re quested by the framework.  Second, the G10 had 
had an excellent discussion on sens itive products and its ideas on this were available in writing.  An 
appropriate number of sensitive products had to be  identified, which meant that one had to take 
account of the situations of each participant i ndividually.  Sensitive products were a starting point 
toward flexibility and the G10 had when discussi ng the formula, acknowledged the new concept of 
constrained flexibility.  In autumn, the G10 hope d that Members could pursue work deleting capping 
and it also envisaged constrained progressivity.  The difficulties Members faced in agriculture once 
more demonstrated that they could not move forwar d in a one-size-fits-all approach to cover different 
situations in agriculture in the membership.   
183. He said that the framework contained many issues which were not mentioned in the 
Agriculture Chair's report or which had not been  developed.  The G10 believed that it was the 
agreement of the membership that this did not me an that these issues had been dropped.  From the 
G10 point of view he mentioned two areas, namely the unsolved problem of preference erosion and 
the specific situation of recently acceded Members in cluding smaller economies in transition.  He said 
that this concluded his remarks on behalf of the G10.   
184. Speaking as the representative of Switzerland  on the other areas of the negotiations he said 
that his delegation was satisfied with the slight  progress which had been made recently in NAMA and 
its assessment was that although th e Swiss formula seemed to gather  broad support as a central tariff 
cutting mechanism the next step would be to negotia te the numbers to be plugged into the formula.  
This meant that Members would need to find the right balance between ambition and flexibility.  
Better market access was n eeded, especially in emerging developing markets to provide the ambition 
but it was also important to take into account the specific sensitivities of developing countries – here 
Members needed to show flexibility.   TN/C/M/19 
Page 30  
 
 185. He said that more effort was needed in services.   In the market access areas, Members needed 
more and better quality offers and in  rule making they needed to c onsolidate the progress made so far 
especially on domestic regulation.   
186. His delegation was concerned that Members had been unable so far to move to a phase of 
more intense and concre te negotiations on how to amend the current Anti-Dumping Agreement.  
Unwarranted trade remedy measures should not be allo wed to take away the hard won benefits in 
market access negotiations.  Members should th erefore embark without delay on text-based 
negotiations.  The same applied to the ar eas of trade and environment and GIs.   
187. On trade facilitation, his delegation was pleased with the progress made in the negotiations 
and it particularly appreciated the constructive mood which had characterised them.  He hoped that by 
Hong Kong, they could get a sense of the scope and ma in issues of this negotiation in order to pave 
way for further progress in 2006.   
188. The development dimension was a central feature of the Round.  It was important that 
Members thought about S&D treatment for developi ng countries in a way which was both conducive 
to development and that led developing countries to better integration into the trading system.  This 
meant that the development dimension should be inte grated in all areas of the negotiations and that 
further liberalization of trade should also take place between developing countries.   
189. The representative of India
 said that his delegation shared the assessment that the Chairman 
had made on the status of the negotiations.  Like  others, India was disappointed with the lack of 
progress.  Members had left themselves a huge task in the remaining months to Hong Kong.  If they 
were to achieve a good outcome in Hong Kong it w as important that Members engaged with each 
other with full commitment and a hi gh level of political engagement. 
190. Agriculture was at the heart of this nego tiation.  Brazil had already presented the G20 
perspective which India fully shared.  While his delegation would study the Chair's assessment he 
nevertheless wished to make a few comments on the position related to market access.  The G20 
proposal on market access had been debated intens ively within the Group to provide a pragmatic 
solution which balanced the interests of exporters, importers and countries with serious concerns of 
poor and vulnerable farming communities.  It had not  been meant to provide a launching pad for other 
parties to introduce elements of additional progressi vity in the formula.  To introduce such ideas 
would destroy the fine balance in the proposal.  The Framework had called for reduction of higher 
tariffs by higher rates keeping in mind the differe nces in tariff structures.  This objective had been 
faithfully reflected in the G20 proposal through a tiered formula.  Introduction of additional 
progressivity had neither envisaged in the Framework nor warranted.  Similarly, the level of ambition 
should not be linked to flexibilities.  The commitmen ts of developing countries had been rooted in 
food security, livelihood security and rural development needs. 
191. India also wished to see more emphasis in the Agriculture Chair's assessment, on the concerns 
of developing countries regarding Special Products  and the Special Safeguard Mechanism on which 
the G33 had submitted detailed proposals.  These issu es involved the interests of hundreds of millions 
of farmers who lived on the edge of subsistence.  A sustainable outcome to these negotiations had to 
put such concerns at the centre.   
192. In NAMA, India did not share the Chair's pe rception of a convergence on the issue of the 
formula.  The African Group had ma de it clear that many others sh ared India's perception in this 
regard.  In India's view, while a Swiss type fo rmula had been supported by Members as the main 
modality for tariff reduction, it was neither easy nor useful at this point to peg specific numbers to the 
Members supporting one or the other Swiss formulae on the table.    TN/C/M/19 
 Page 31 
 
 
 193. He said that the reports from the negotiating Ch airs were meant only to facilitate a seamless 
resumption of Members work in September.  They  were not negotiated text s and Members should not 
look into them for guidance which was only available in their mandate.   
194. He said that India's disappointment at the current state of the services agenda was acute.  
There was an urgent need for corrective action a nd political initiatives to impart momentum to the 
services negotiation.  In this connection, he info rmed Members that India was filing an ambitious 
revised offer opening up a number of sectors in mode 3 of interest to its trading partners.  These 
included architectural services, integrated engin eering and urban planning and landscaping services, 
veterinary services, some areas of environmental services, distribution services excluding retail trade, and additional areas in constructi on and tourism and a number of othe r areas including in educational 
services, management services and life insurance services.  India had also made further improvements 
in its substantial mode 4 offer including for contractual service supp liers and independent 
professionals.  It had expanded sectoral coverage fo r these categories as well as aligned definitional 
parameters with the proposals it a nd other partners had tabled.  He hoped that this offer would provide 
momentum to the services negotiations and would i nduce its trading partners to reciprocate with 
improved offers in sectors and modes of interest to India.   
195. He expressed concern over the development di mension of the negotiation.  Members had 
given some attention to the S&D cluster albeit wi thout much progress.  They had made no effort 
towards a collective definition of the development deliverables at Hong Kong.  India believed this 
task had to be taken up as a matter of priority wh en Members reassembled.  An early solution to the 
issue of amendments to the TRIPS Agreement to give effect to the General Council Decision of 
August 2003 was urgent.   
196. He reaffirmed India's commitment to the agreed targets for the Hong Kong Ministerial 
towards successfully completing the Doha negotia tion in 2006.  India di d not underestimate the 
magnitude of this task but rema ined optimistic that progress in th e autumn would make up for the 
slow progress of recent months.   
197. The representative of Chile
, said that Members were at a standstill in their work.  They had 
set ambitious goals for this round and would have to take decisions that had economic and political 
costs in order to meet the objectives.  Consequently , the fact that Members were in a deadlock was no 
surprise.  He said that what was worrying, however, was that this situation had been dragging on and 
high-level political statements had produced no tangible progress.   
198. He said when Members had adopted the July 2004 Decision, it had been envisaged that in 
order to adopt modalities for NAMA and agriculture at the Sixth Ministerial Conference, they would 
have to establish the architecture first to enable Ministers to decide on the level of ambition.  
Members were half way through the year and had fail ed to produce the architecture.  For a number of 
reasons the main players had demonstrated an inertia that had delayed progress.  He said the Sixth Ministerial Conference was drawing closer and there was little time left to settle many outstanding 
issues.  It was essential for Members to unblock th e agriculture negotiations in the first weeks of 
September in order to meet the objective of approving modalities in December.   
199. He said the time had come for all to shoulder their political responsibilities.  The large trading 
powers had to assume leadership with their sights on the future and adopt more flexible positions that 
were conducive to convergence.  Chile had alre ady begun to forge convergence through the G20 
proposal on agriculture and its proposal on NAMA.   
200. The Hong Kong Ministerial Declaration had to reflect the consensuses in the various areas 
covered by the single undertaking and at the same  time refer to the other areas of the WTO Work TN/C/M/19 
Page 32  
 
 Programme.  Members had to start thinking about drafti ng the declaration since this task required time 
and dedication.   
201. His delegation's overall assessment was that the situation was not good.  In previous days the 
Chairman had said that what was needed was not mo re work but courage.  All the decisions Members 
had chosen not to take in July would have to be taken in December at the latest.   
202. On agriculture he said that the Cairns Gr oup and the G20 had spoken for Chile.  Regarding 
NAMA, together with Mexico and Colombia, Chile  had tabled a proposal aimed at generating the 
necessary flexibility without sacrificing ambition.  It believed that the proposal provided good 
prospects for finding common ground.  His delegation noted with great satisfaction that a consensus 
appeared to be emerging on reaching 100 per cent bindi ng.  He also noted progress in other areas of 
the NAMA negotiations which had allowed for optimis m about what might happen from September.   
203. He said that a number of realities needed highlighting.  First, good results in NAMA meant 
that there had to be good results in agriculture.  Second, Members wished not only to open markets 
but also to keep them open.  This implied that good results in NAMA would mean improving rules through appropriate amendment of the Anti-Dumping Agreement.   
204. On anti-dumping, the Hong Kong Ministerial Conf erence would have to set policy guidelines 
enabling Members to work on the basis of a text that the Chairman should present in January 2006.  
Negotiating such policy guidelines was equivalent to negotiating modalities in NAMA and agriculture 
because it involved setting down the broad lines of the results of the negotiations.  Consequently, in 
parallel to the technical discussi ons his delegation urged the Chairm an to conduct a process of policy 
consultations aimed at fine tuning ideas and prepari ng the text to be adopted by Ministers in Hong 
Kong.  The task was not easy because there were  important sensitivities but it was essential to 
achieving an overall balance. 
205. Regarding the services negotiations, he said that the initial and revised offers had afforded no 
new opportunities.  At most, they consolidated the status quo.  Reaching Hong  Kong in a position to 
define levels of ambition more precisely constitute d a major task and intellectual challenge.  He  
highlighted the importance of making headway in the negotiations on domestic regulation and called 
on Members to show ambition and flexibility.  He sai d that from a systemic standpoint this might be 
one of the most important outcomes of this Round.   
206. In conclusion, he said that Chile was disappoint ed that Members' expectations for July had 
not been fulfilled.  Their work from September would thus be more difficult.  His delegation was committed to the attainment of a successful outcome to Hong Kong and would work actively to that 
end.  As Hong Kong drew closer Members woul d need to increasingly have an overview of the 
process and maintain a proper balance between the vari ous areas of the negotiations.  The work of the 
TNC would be increasingly relevant.  He said in creased and consistent participation by Senior 
Officials from capitals would likewise be fundamental.   
207. The representative of Indonesia
, on behalf of the G33 , conveyed the Group's appreciation to 
the Agriculture Chair for the hard work and leadership in guiding the agriculture negotiations.  The 
G33 understood that at the present stage it was not  possible and indeed counterproductive to impose 
technical solutions to deeply unresolved political i ssues.  The Group was also of the view that what 
was needed now was political co mmitment from all Members.   
208. As an alliance of a large number of developi ng countries including LDCs, the G33 reiterated 
that guaranteeing food security, livelihood security and rural development constituted the core 
foundation of the development agenda and reflected th e developing countries' rights to development.  
Hence, the Group urged that comprehensive and ba lanced solutions in all three pillars of the  TN/C/M/19 
 Page 33 
 
 
 agriculture negotiations should be achieved so to de liver meaningful and effective S&D treatment for 
developing countries from the current round.   
209. He said the G33 had presented proposals on both Special Products and the Special Safeguard 
Mechanism.  The Group was now engaged in deve loping indicators on the three criteria for self-
designation of Special Products as agreed in th e July Framework and Doha mandate.  The G33 
expected that other Members would respond constr uctively to these proposals keeping in mind the 
development imperative of the Round.   
210. The G33 remained committed to a successful co mpletion of the negotia tions and stood ready 
to engage constructively with Members for a successf ul outcome of the Sixth Ministerial Conference 
in Hong Kong.  The Group believed that only th rough collective spirit and close cooperation among 
Members could the development dimensions of the Doha Declaration be effectively achieved.  It 
called on Members to double their efforts and rene w their political commitment to the Doha mandate 
immediately after the summer break.   
211. The representative of Kenya  associated his delegation with the statements by Egypt on behalf 
of the African Group and by Indonesia on behalf of the G33.  Kenya agreed that developing country 
Members had shown flexibility and pragmatism in th ese negotiations which had not been reciprocated 
by some Members.  Indeed the divergences on key areas of negotiations were not between Africa and other Members but between major players.  These differences had put at risk progress on issues of 
importance to Africa.   
212. The process adopted in some negotiating grou ps had also contributed to the situation 
Members found themselves at the present meeting.  It  had not been sufficiently transparent.  There 
was room for improvement and Kenya hoped that there would be better representation in future 
consultations when Members resumed work in Se ptember.  Although the Chairman had pressed the 
panic button, Kenya was still confident that agreemen t in key areas was within reach before the Hong 
Kong Ministerial.  But this would re quire change of gear and toning down of the levels of ambition on 
the part of some Members.   
213. On agriculture, his delegation had noted from the Chairman’s report that one year after the 
adoption of the July Framework no convergence had been reached on key issues in the negotiations.  
This did not augur well for the Hong Kong Ministeria l Conference.  He also noted that the market 
access pillar continued to lag behind the other two pillars.  Members should aim to make progress in 
all pillars of the negotiations so as to provide c onfidence and comfort to all Members.  While Kenya 
agreed that the focus of work should be the tariff reduction formula and the number of bands 
including the thresholds Members also needed to address the S&D treatment component of the market 
access pillar.  These included but were not limited to the issues of Special Products and the Special 
Safeguard Mechanism.   
214. On domestic support, besides aiming at substan tial reduction, Members had to ensure tighter 
disciplines and commitments to avoid future misuse th rough disguised change in colours of support.   
215. On export competition, Kenya believed that the key to moving the process forward in this 
area was to define the parallel commitments in expor t credits STEs and food aid.  Members needed to 
identify a yardstick against which they could measure what they wanted to achieve.  The concerns of 
net food importing developing countries (NFIDCs), food aid recipient and the special role played by STEs in developing countries had to be taken into consideration while identifying the yardstick.   
216. As Members proceeded with thei r work, they had to ensure that the development component 
of the negotiations was fully taken on board.  In this respect, Kenya expect ed to see concrete and TN/C/M/19 
Page 34  
 
 operational S&D treatment embodied in the results of  the negotiations in accordance with the Doha 
mandate.   
217. He said the reports of the NAMA Chairman had paid more attention to the formula and the 
elements relating to the formula.  It was interes ting to note in the report that the Chairman believed 
that Members supported the use of the Swiss formul a as the central tariff cutting mechanism yet there 
had been no agreement among them on the shape of th e formula.  The report did not give the same 
level of specificity to other elements of importa nce to Kenya.  For instance on preferences, the 
Chairman said that Members would continue examining the subject as it was a complex and 
multifaceted one.  The report ignored two importa nt contributions from the ACP and the African 
Groups that had defined the problem and offered po ssible solutions, including the introduction of a 
correction coefficient in the formula.  He said that  issues of interest to the poorer Members of this 
organization should be given more emphasis for this  round of trade talks to qualify as a development 
round.   
218. In September, Members should evaluate the cu rrent process where the compartmentalisation 
of discussions of technical issues within NAMA ha d failed to bring together cross-cutting issues 
where trade-offs were needed.   
219. In services, Kenya had noted that the number of  both initial and revised offers had increased 
since the last TNC.  However it was concerned th at the offers had failed to address the existing 
asymmetries in commitments.  A quick analysis of these offers revealed that sectors and modes of 
supply of export interest to many developing coun tries like Kenya continued to lag behind.  Sectors 
such as professional services and modes 4 and 1 were the least liberalised as re flected in the current 
commitments and offers.  These negotiations ther efore offered the opportunity for Members to 
address the current  asymmetries in the commitments and ensure that the be nefits were equitably 
distributed among Members at different levels of development.  Kenya believed that the need for 
complementary approaches as mentioned in the services report was, among others, to correct the existing imbalances in the Uruguay Round commitmen ts in services.  However, Kenya would not 
support alternative approaches that were incons istent with the GATS principle of progressive 
liberalisation and the guidelines and pro cedures for negotiations in services.   
220. He said that Members needed to make real progress in the rule making in services.  Kenya 
was concerned with the current pace of discussions in  this area.  At some point Members might need 
to have a reality check in all areas of rule making in  order to enable them to set their goals for Hong 
Kong.  Although divergences still existed on S&D Category II proposals being discussed in the 
Services Special Session, Kenya appreciated the intens ive engagement that had taken place so far.  It 
therefore looked forward to the resolution of these issues before Hong Kong Ministerial.   
221. On trade facilitation, he expressed concern that the issue of technical assistance and capacity 
building to address the needs and priorities of developing countries had not been effectively 
addressed.  The modalities for negotiation on trade facilitation provided a st rong linkage between 
support for technical assistance and capacity building during negotiations and implementation of any 
possible outcome.  Kenya appreciated the Secretariat's compilation of proposals and noted that it would be updated to take on board  any new proposals in future.  It was Kenya’s understanding that 
the compilation was only an information tool and not a negotiating text.   
222. Kenya's optimism in development and developm ent-related issues was not the same as in 
other subjects.  Development, a key issue in th is round did not provide much hope to the poorer 
Members of the Organization.  So far no progress had been made on any of the issues whether on 
S&D, implementation or TRIPS and Public Health.  Development had to remain a priority to give 
meaning to the integration of poor  developing countries into the multilateral trading system and to 
remain faithful to the Doha mandate.  As a cross-cu tting issue it had to be reflected in all areas of the  TN/C/M/19 
 Page 35 
 
 
 negotiations.  Key elements included paying special attention to the specific needs and concerns 
relating to food security, rural development, liveli hood, preferences, commodities etc.  Underlying all 
these should be recognition of the critical role unhi ndered real and meaningful market access could 
play as a powerful tool for development.   
223. He said that Kenya defined development as a movement of the whole social system upwards.  
This involved among others, raising the standard of  living of the masses of population and providing 
them with employment.  These negotiations had to c ontribute to raising of standard of living in 
Africa.   
224. The representative of Argentina  associated his delegation with the statements by Brazil on 
behalf of the G20 and Australia on behalf of the Cairns Group.  He said that the report submitted by 
the Agriculture Chairman showed how serious the si tuation was.  It set out the areas where work was 
needed and highlighted the difficulties Members had to tackle by Hong Kong.  Members had achieved 
little in the previous year that to think about wh at needed to be done in  the three months from 
September to the end of November not only caused  a headache but made his delegation doubt that 
success was possible.  His delegation regretted to have  to agree with the Chairm an's assessment of the 
status of the negotiations.  Like the Chairman, his delegation felt that while not disastrous, the current 
situation was disappointing.  It would have wished to have been able to enumerate progress instead of 
merely identifying the problems.   
225. The situation in agriculture contrasted with  the report submitted by the NAMA Chairman who 
pointed to a growing support for the Swiss formula.   His delegation would have welcomed something 
similar in the report on agriculture.  It was important that Members knew what circumstances had 
allowed the Chairman to change the assessment he ha d given in the report of 8 July.  It would have 
been appropriate for the Chairman to also take acc ount in his report of the statement submitted by the 
African Group.   
226. His delegation was convinced of the need to obt ain ambitious and balanced results in Hong 
Kong.  Members could not continue to demand at sa me time real market ac cess in NAMA and greater 
flexibility in the agriculture formula.  For developi ng countries agriculture remained at the heart of the 
negotiations.  His delegation was hoping for a substan tial reform of this sector so that progress could 
be made in eliminating existing distortions in th e three pillars.  This continued to be an obvious 
priority and an objective which Argentina hoped had not  been forgotten.  There could be no progress 
in NAMA and services if the developed countries fa iled to take seriously the commitment to an 
effective contribution in agriculture.  If Argentina we re to buy more products in the areas where it was 
inefficient it needed to be sure of being able to se ll more products in the areas where it was efficient.   
227. His delegation welcomed the announcement by the United States concerning its 
Administration's political commitment to this Roun d now supported by the House of Representatives' 
approval of CAFTA, even though it accounted for onl y 0.15 per cent of its external trade.  His 
delegation applauded the G8 Declaration but a lack  of willingness to turn such declarations into 
concrete offers still remained.  Unless Members re turned in September with political commitment – 
and such commitment called for great courage in the face of powerful lobbies – progress would not be 
possible.  His delegation hoped that such commitm ent would be forthcoming so that Members could 
get to Hong Kong successfully. 
228. The representative of Norway  said that the Chairman's report and the reports of the Chairs of 
the negotiating groups had made it clear that ther e was a lot of work n eeded between the present 
meeting and Hong Kong.   
229. His delegation fully endorsed the statement by  Switzerland and wished to emphasize three 
points from the Norwegian perspective.  First, No rway remained firmly opposed to a tariff cap.  TN/C/M/19 
Page 36  
 
 Second, different situations and sensitivities across the membership could not be disregarded.  One-
size-fits-all solutions would neither be feasible nor  desirable and the differences in current tariff 
structures had to be taken into account through fl exibilities in the tariff formula and flexibilities for 
sensitive products.  Third, providing sufficient flexibilities to deal with the diversities among 
Members did not imply that some Members were getting off the hook but only that a few small 
countries could not be required to make the consider ably larger contributions of the majority of the 
membership.   
230. In order for this round to be successful not ju st for Norway but for the entire membership, 
there was a need for an appropriate balance to be  struck.  This applied both within the separate 
negotiating areas and between areas.  For this round  to deliver on its promises Members should not 
only make progress on agriculture but also have paralle l results in the other areas of negotiations.  He 
said Norway's ambitions for this round remained high.   
231. Turning to NAMA, he welcomed the report by th e Chairman and trusted that under his skilful 
chairmanship Members would be able to deliver resu lts by Hong Kong.  He agreed that the time had 
come to start discussing numbers and the linkage between ambition and flexibilities.  The negotiations 
had shown that developing Members had different needs and interests.  Members therefore needed to 
pursue an approach that gave developing Members some flexibility in how they could benefit in 
NAMA.   
232. In services, the picture was bleaker.  Norway had noted the Chairman's call for a search for 
avenues to make progress and his delegation would do its  best to ensure that the service negotiations 
could also deliver results in Hong Kong.   
233. He said that rules was another key issue for Norway.  Substantial results were now required 
and Members had to have parallel progress in rul es by Hong Kong.  He called on Members to enter 
real text-based negotiations by Hong Kong.  Firm and clear guidance and direction from Ministers, with a sufficiently high degree of specificity to gua rantee a result that was meaningful to Members in 
2006 was needed in Hong Kong.   
234. He welcomed the progress in trade facilitation and assured Members that technical assistance 
remained a prominent element of the mandate.   
235. He said that all Members recognized the n eed to ensure that the Round delivered on 
development.  Over the previous months, the CTD in Special Session had concentrated on five proposals by the LDCs.  Progress had been good an d there had been a clear convergence on some 
issues, but unfortunately Members were not quite ther e.  His delegation would continue to participate 
actively and constructively in these negotiations.  Finally, he underlined the importance of a 
transparent and inclusive process.   
236. The representative of Bangladesh
, on behalf of the LDC Group , said that the WTO was at a 
critical stage in the negotiations of the Doha Round.   In 2001, although not in favour of a round the 
LDCs had signed on.  The only saving grace was the le vel of ambition which had appeared quite high.  
Members had hoped for significant developments in many areas of the negotiations.  However, the 
LDCs had recently begun to wonder if they were right to maintain high expectations.  Cancùn had 
been a setback but the 2004 July Decisi on had salvaged the situation somewhat.   
237. After July 2004, the LDCs had engaged in nego tiations with all seriousness.  They had hoped 
that there would be a significant pack age by July 2005 which would lead to a very substantial result at 
Hong Kong.  Initially, there had been talk of a July outcome or July approximation.  Some months 
ago old concerns had reappeared and Members had st opped talking of an agreed package in July but 
of Chair's statements or reports.  The LDCs had no problem with Chairs' reports, but they had to  TN/C/M/19 
 Page 37 
 
 
 contain substance and forward movement in the nego tiations.  He regretted that some Chairs' reports 
revealed a lack of adequate progress.   
238. He said that the negotiations had not been conclude d.  However, Members had to be realistic.  
Having failed to deliver at Cancùn, Members had to ensure that Hong Kong was a success. and this 
was why July had been so critical.  Furthermore, there was a political momentum generated by the 
Commission for Africa Report as well as the G8 Communiqué which could have helped in the 
negotiations.   
239. He said the level of ambition of the Doha R ound was critical for the development dimension 
of the Round.  An ambitious outcome with signifi cant reduction of subsidies, increased market access 
and opening up of the services sectors, particularly for less-skilled workers under mode 4, would 
represent a gain for the world economy.  This gain had to be equitably distributed.  The LDCs had 
hoped that special provisions would be made for the disadvantaged Members.  Some LDCs would 
face significant transition costs while NFIDCs w ould suffer from rising food prices as subsidies in 
rich countries decreased.  Others would see their pr eference margins being eroded and would require 
support and assistance if they were to benefit fro m an ambitious outcome of the Doha Round.  This 
support had to come from both the multilateral trade rules and targeted assistance from the 
international community.   
240. Many Members felt that LDCs' concerns were being taken care of in the negotiations.  For 
instance, LDCs were apparently being helped through exemptions from tariff reduction, flexibility in 
bindings tariff lines etc.  The reality was that LDCs seldom benefited from these potential opportunities.  They generally had WTO-plus commitments through bilateral/regional trade 
agreements or unilaterally throug h the outcome of their negotiations with the World Bank or the 
International Monetary Fund.  For instance, most  LDCs had little binding co verage but their actual 
applied tariffs were only 13.8 per cent.  In the WTO negotiations LDCs could gain only if the 
membership made commitments that  helped promote their exports.  This was why LDCs had called 
upon the membership to show more flexibility and commitment with regard  to the issues that 
concerned them.   
241. The Livingstone Ministerial Declaration of J une 2005 was the basis on which the LDCs were 
conducting their negotiations towards the Hong Kong Mi nisterial.  They urged the membership to 
take into consideration their positions in this declar ation.  The first operative item in the Livingstone 
Declaration was the demand for bound duty-free and quota-free market access for products originating from LDCs.  The Group recognized that  this might seem to be a hurdle for many.  
However, when it looked at the trade statistics, it was apparent that pr oviding LDCs duty and quota-
free market access would hardly show on Members radar screens.  At the same time, Members would recognize that providing such access did not mean that LDCs would automatically begin to export more.  This would create the demand and the private sectors in LDC countries would need to respond 
to this demand by creating the supply capacity.  Ther eafter, the next challenge for LDCs would be to 
market the products in the destination countries.  Members were fully aware of the difficulties 
involved in this process.   
242. Providing duty-free and quota-free access with realis tic, flexible and simplified rules of origin 
was the first step towards helping LDCs integrate in to the global economy.  It required political will 
in the country providing such access.  The Group urged developed Members and developing Members 
in a position to do so to provide such access to it at Hong Kong.   
243. Another important area as highlighted in the Li vingstone Declaration, was services.  Full 
implementation of the Modalities for the Special Treatment of LDCs was an overriding concern for LDCs.  They had made a submission to which th ey had not received substantive responses.  The 
revised offers had failed to take on board the in terests of LDCs.  The movement of temporary TN/C/M/19 
Page 38  
 
 workers, particularly the less skilled under mode 4, was an area of great potential benefit for all 
Members.  Despite strong economic rationale the Gr oup noticed very little movement on this subject.  
At the same time demands were be ing made of LDCs to open their service sectors which undermined 
the development objective of the LDC modalities.   The Group expressed its overall profound 
disappointment at the lack of progress on the many issues of concern to it.  In the area of trade 
facilitation the negotiations were moving at a rapid pace.  The proposals submitted did not generally 
take into account the implications on LDCs and how they would be able to implement them.  He said 
that the modalities were very clear and needed to be  observed.  In the CTD Special Session, despite 
major concessions from the LDC Group, there had been no progress.  The S&D provisions were important and the texts had to provide economically meaningful results for LDCs.  With regard to 
cotton which was an important commodity for ma ny in the Group, the Group called upon Members to 
address the concerns already expressed ambitiously, e xpeditiously and specifically in all three pillars 
of the agricultural negotiations.   
244. The LDCs had some concerns about the process Members were currently following.  There 
was lack of broad-based participation.  The LDCs recognized that all 148 Members could not 
negotiate on each and every issue.  The 32 LDC Memb ers and those in the process of accession were 
represented by their coordinator.  In specific ar eas, the LDC Group had focal points to assist the 
coordinator.  As a group it was effectively represen ted when its coordinator or the focal point was 
present.  Lately, the Group had observed that in ma ny negotiations, even where it had an interest, 
LDCs had not been invited.  A second concern related to the pace and manner of negotiations.  
Recently small groups of Members had devel oped understandings among themselves and brought 
their texts to the general membership only at the last possible moment.  This placed the LDC Group in 
an extremely difficult situation.  He said that it wa s only when LDCs saw the broad parameters of the 
negotiations that they could observe how their inte rests were affected.  Fo r instance, only when the 
formula was accepted and applied would it be possible to  evaluate the erosion of preferences.  If the 
proposals were tabled at a very late stage, the sc ope for negotiations, both in substance and in time, 
was so limited that LDCs were unable to in corporate their concerns.  The Group urged the 
membership to ensure that proposals were tabled ear ly when there was time to discuss the issues.   
245. He said the LDCs remained committed to mu ltilateral trade negotiations.  The development 
dimension had to be firmly rooted in the Doha R ound and the interests of the marginalized Members 
had to be taken on board.  All Members had to have  equitable benefit from the current round for the 
global community to benefit as a whole.   
246. The representative of Benin
, on behalf of the ACP Group , said that at this crucial phase in the 
negotiations a global assessment was vital in order to assess what had been achieved so far and to 
identify the difficulties encountered.  This would en able Members to clearly identify the challenges 
that urgently needed to be resolved so that the Hong Kong Ministerial Conference was a success and 
paved the path to a successful conclusion of the Round.   
247. He said that the launching at Doha in 2001 of a round of negotiations devoted to development 
had raised enormous expectations.  However, at present one could legitimately ask and be concerned 
about the results of a round dedicated to developmen t.  At this juncture, Me mbers needed to increase 
efforts and shift gears.  The  mini-Ministerial meeting in Dalian had seemed a good opportunity to 
instil a new dynamism and give a boost to the Ge neva process.  In Dalian, Ministers had given 
negotiators very firm and clear instructions to accelerate work and make substantial progress before 
the summer break without compromising the high level of ambition.   
248. He said that the more problems they could so lve in Geneva the better the chances for success 
of the Sixth Ministerial Conference.  This outcome could be achieved on two c onditions; first, that all 
Members effectively, fully and constructively co mmitted themselves to the negotiations and second, 
but not less important, that Members achieved a vi able balance which took into consideration the  TN/C/M/19 
 Page 39 
 
 
 interests of all.  Given that this round was committed to development, the specific needs of 
developing countries in particular should be at the core of the negotiations.  He reiterated the ACP's 
willingness to continue to do its utmost to cont ribute to the successful conclusion of the Doha 
negotiations.   
249. He said that the ACP's interests included agricultu re, the specific and crucial issue of cotton, 
market access for non-agricultural products, services,  rules, and most importantly the development 
issues including TRIPS and Public Health, trade fac ilitation and issues related to trade, debt and 
finance and to small economies.   
250. He emphasized the vital role of agriculture in  ACP economies.  ACP countries wished to see 
the establishment of effective and meaningful  modalities in respect of its key concerns, inter- alia  on 
the issues of longstanding preferences, Special Pr oducts, a tariff reduction formula with the necessary 
flexibility, Special Safeguard Mechanism, duty and quota free access for LDCs, issues relating to food 
security such as food aid, S&D in respect of STEs and export credits and the implementation of the Marrakesh Decision.  Further, the Group expected  Members to deliver a balanced package, which 
took into account the interests and concerns of all, in particular the small and vulnerable countries.   
251. On cotton, the elimination of all forms of export subsidies and improved market access for 
international trade were the central objectives fo r the ACP Group to a successful outcome of the 
negotiations.  In this context it was essential that  there was clear delivery on bound, duty-free and 
quota-free access for cotton and its by-products fo r LDCs that were net cotton producers and 
exporters.  It was also importa nt that domestic support measures were eliminated and that an 
emergency support fund for cotton production was created.  The ACP position on its key issues of 
concern in agriculture would be circulated to Members with a view to ensuring that the Group's 
concerns were fully taken on board in the negotiations.   
252. Turning to NAMA, the Group continued to be preoccupied with several aspects of the 
formula, treatment of unbound tariffs, preference erosion, flexibilities for ACP countries and NTBs.  
The Group reminded participants that less than full reciprocity and S&D treatment were integral and 
cross-cutting components of paragraph 16 of the Doha mandate.  ACP count ries should be allowed 
flexibilities in binding coverage and levels commensurate to their development.   
253. On services, the Group noted the changes that ha d taken place since the last TNC in terms of 
numbers of initial offers and revised offers.  There had to be a balanced outcome on market access for 
services negotiations and those areas of special inte rest to developing countries should be taken care 
of in the negotiations.   
254. With respect to rules, especially RTAs, the Gr oup's view was that RTAs should be formulated 
in a way that assisted in the attainment of development objectives while creating new economic 
opportunities at a pace commensurate with the capabiliti es of ACP countries.  In this context, it was 
essential that the discussions of Article XXIV confer red greater flexibility for developing countries in 
terms of transitional periods and the degree of liber alization and incorporated real S&D treatment.   
255. On trade facilitation there had been genera l acceptance that improved border measures, 
transparency in fees and simplification and standa rdization of documentati on and procedures could 
bring benefits to all Members.  However, it was crucial that any commitments for further 
improvement in developing  countries should be within their res ource capacities and capability.  In this 
regard the Group stressed that the proposals ta bled on trade facilitation should not go beyond the 
current mandate of improving and clarifying Article V, VIII and X.  It emphasized the need for 
concrete actions on the critical area of tec hnical assistance and capacity  building needed by 
developing countries and how these could be meani ngfully integrated into the negotiations.   TN/C/M/19 
Page 40  
 
 256. Concerning development issues, the Group reitera ted that the Doha Ministerial Declaration 
had placed development at the heart of the Doha Work Programme.  Given the critical importance of 
development to ACP countries, it expressed c oncern over the lack of effective progress on 
development issues.  These issues were key co mponents for the successful achievement of the 
objectives of the Round.  They covered inter-alia  S&D treatment, implementation issues and 
concerns, the special situation of LDCs, small ec onomies, commodity issues, technical assistance and 
capacity building, transfer of technology and trade, debt and finance.  The Group attached particular 
importance to the LDCs situation and therefore placed emphasis on the need for LDCs to receive 
priority attention to facilitate their meaningful integration into the multilateral trading system.   
257. With regard to small economies, he said that  the Group was aware that discussions in the 
Dedicated Session of the CTD on the Work Progr amme for Small Economie s under paragraph 35 of 
the Doha Ministerial Declaration had reached an important stage where Members had embarked on the solutions phase of the charact eristics-based approach.  The Group urged all Members to support 
these efforts which would produce the needed outcome for small economies.   
258. The Group emphasized the relationship between trad e, debt and finance and development.  A 
recent ACP submission had taken cognizance of the st atements made by the G8 leaders and called for 
the establishment of a regular Committee on Trade, De bt and Finance.  The Group urged for concrete 
action in this area.   
259. Concerning TRIPS and Public Health, he said that the ACP Group supported the call for the 
amendment of the TRIPS Agreement with a view to  putting in place a permanent solution envisaged 
in paragraph 11 of the July 2003 Deci sion on TRIPS and Public Health.   
260. The representative of Canada
 expressed disappointment with the lack of progress at this stage 
of the DDA.  Members would have been in much worse shape if it were not for the very capable 
leadership of the Chairpersons.  The membership  had set for themselves a reasonable and realistic 
goal for July this year - first approximations of ou tcomes for Hong Kong and yet had missed that goal.  
Members had put themselves in a difficult situation and needed to get out of it.  It would not help to 
see this situation as a failure.  His delegation pref erred to be optimistic and believed that Members 
had only deferred their success.  Members' inability to meet their own objectives for this July would 
simply make their job much more difficult in the fall.   
261. He said Canada's goals for Hong Kong were well known.  It  continued to push for full 
modalities by December and for conclusion of the Round in 2006.  These objectives were entirely 
realistic and with political will and hard work  Members could all meet these timelines.   
262. Although Canada preferred to be optimistic, it was particularly disappointed that Members 
had not been able to make more progress towards th e agriculture modalities.  He emphasised that this 
was not due to the excellent work of the Chairm an but due largely to the membership and their 
inability to resolve their differences.  He thanked th e Agriculture Chairman for his hard work in trying 
to achieve consensus.  The Chair's status report at  the end of June had identified the key issues on 
which progress was needed, leaving ambition to be determined in the more political phase that would 
have to come in the fall.  Despite this report, Me mbers had been unable to narrow their differences in 
any meaningful way.  A tremendous amount of work remained to be done if Members were to reach 
the goal of full modalities by the Hong Kong Mini sterial meeting.  While some good progress had 
been made in the domestic support and export comp etition pillars over the past year more work 
remained to be done.  In particular, Members need ed to finish developments of the structure for 
negotiating reduction commitments for trade-distorting domestic support so that they could move to 
defining the level of ambition and ensuring that these commitments were backed up by effective disciplines on the Blue Box and the Green Box.  It  was in the area of market access, however, were 
Members remained virtually at the starting point.  They could not make progress on this critical pillar  TN/C/M/19 
 Page 41 
 
 
 until they resolved some basic questions about the na ture of the tariff formula and some elements of 
how sensitive products would be handled.  The previ ous week had served to sharpen and clarify the 
key questions in agriculture and to identify the deci sions needed so that Members could start to move 
forward.  Over the coming few we eks they needed to reflect caref ully and seek the necessary political 
guidance so that negotiations could be resumed in earnest from the start of September.   
263.   Despite the lack of agreement on NAMA encouraging signs of progress had been seen over 
the previous weeks.  Canada sensed growing conv ergence around a simple Swiss formula for tariff 
reduction which could deliver real improvements in market access.  It was encouraged to see more Members shifting their focus to promoting their offe nsive interests.  In Canada's view this positive 
approach would lead to beneficial outcomes for a ll Members.  Very strong support for a non-linear 
mark up approach to unbound tariffs had also been seen  in recent weeks.  Canada realized that some 
concerns remained to be addressed, particularly t hose of Members with relatively low unbound tariffs, 
and it was prepared to work to resolve these i ssues.  The NAMA Chairman's commentary was an 
accurate reflection of the status of NAMA negotiati ons and served as a much needed dose of reality.  
The NAMA Chairman had quite rightly pointed ou t that there were major challenges ahead if 
Members were to resolve their differences by Hong Kong.  He had put the onus on Members to work 
toward convergence.  He said his delegation was rea dy to play an active role in this endeavour.   
264. The state of the services negotiations was worrying.  The Chair's report, which Canada 
supported had noted that Members were generally dissatisfied with the lack of progress in these 
negotiations.  Canada agreed that the offers  on the table presented virtually no new business 
opportunities and in many cases did not even reflect current levels of liberalization.  Canada 
welcomed the Chair's intention to hold intensiv e consultations on a broad range of issues and 
supported the work plan he had outlined.  Given the time left between the present meeting and Hong 
Kong Members had to be focused, creative, and realistic.   
265. He said doubters would say the membership and the Organization were not up to the 
challenge - the Round could not be completed.  Sk eptics would say it was not worth the effort and 
governments simply did not have the political will to  make difficult decisions and get the job done.  It 
was true that time was not on Members' side but they did have time to prove the cynics wrong.   
266. Some of the delegates at the present meeting would recall that a few years back, the World 
Bank had estimated that abolishing all trade barri ers could boost global income by $2.8 trillion by 
2015.  This was just an estimate and the Doha Round  would not abolish all trade barriers, but a figure 
like that served as a strong reminder of the real object ives of this trade round.  There was too much at 
stake to allow for cynicism or failure.   
267. The representative of China
 said that as a member of the G20 his delegation supported the 
statement by Brazil and it emphasized the particul ar importance of the G20 comprehensive proposal 
on market access.  China hoped the proposal would be  taken as the basis for further negotiations.  
Agriculture would continue to be at the centre of the negotiations taking into account its vital 
importance to economic and social development as well as its political sensitivity to most developing 
countries in which agriculture was s till the basic means for survival for the large majority of their 
population.  Progress was needed in all the three pillars before the Hong Kong Ministerial.   
268. NAMA was another important area of great impor tance to China.  There were already a 
number of proposals on the table on the formula.  Regarding the Swiss form ula China believed that 
the basic concept of having two coefficients with an adequate gap between developed and developing 
Members as contained in the recent submission of Pakistan should be a minimum requirement.  It 
therefore strongly supported the Pakistani proposal on the formula.   TN/C/M/19 
Page 42  
 
 269. China was encouraged to see that  more initial and revised offers had been put on the table in 
the services area.  However, it was not happy abou t the level of ambition reflected in the offers, 
particularly those submitted by major developed Me mbers in areas of great export interest to the 
developing Members.  If the developed Members rea lly wanted commercially meaningful offers from 
other Members they had firstly to set a good example and present commercially meaningful offers, 
particularly in areas or sectors where the devel oping Members enjoyed comparative advantage.  The 
current request-offer approach should continue to be  the main approach for the services negotiations.  
China was open to discuss the need to enhance th is process in line with the GATS, the services 
negotiating guidelines and the July Package.   
270.  On rules China regretted to see that after mo re than three years of negotiations Members 
were still bogged down at the stage of tabling and disc ussing proposals.  Real negotiations had yet to 
be begin.  In order to accelerate work in this ar ea Members should enter into  text-based consultations 
at an early date.  Only through these could the negotia tions in this area keep pace with those in other 
major areas and tangible progress be made before the Hong Kong Ministerial.   
271. On trade facilitation, he said there had been  good progress with many proposals.  However, 
Members had to enter into real negotiations as soon as possible.  At the same time, sufficient technical 
assistance and capacity building should be promptly  provided as a matter of urgency to developing 
Members in need, particularly LDCs, so as to he lp them build confidence in the negotiations and 
resolve their preoccupations about difficulties of implementation.   
272. On the issue of development, he said Members should continue to commit themselves to the 
level of ambition as defined by the Doha Minister ial Declaration, the Declaration on the TRIPS and 
Public Health and the Decision on Implementation- Related Issues and Concerns.  As this was a 
development round, Members needed to place the need s and interests of the developing countries at 
the heart of the Work Programme.  The special concerns of recently  acceded Members caused by their 
extensive market access commitm ents made on accession should be  effectively addressed.  The 
Agreement-specific proposals on S&D treatment by LD Cs had been discussed in the CTD Special 
Session in the previous two months.  However, even on certain issues where other developing 
Members had great difficulties, for example TRIM s, no due understanding and sympathy had been 
accorded by the major developed Members to LDCs  and no substantive progress had been made.  If 
the concerns of LDCs were so difficult to address then Members could well imagine what would happen on those Agreement-specific proposals on S& D treatment for other developing Members.  
China appealed to the developed Members to dem onstrate more political will and more substantive 
flexibilities in dealing with the problems on th e Agreement-specific S&D provisions so as to 
strengthen them and make them more precise, ef fective and operational as mandated by the Doha 
Declaration.   
273. He said there was not a lot of time left before  Hong Kong and much remained to be done.  It 
was not helpful to make too many complaints or  to be overly pessimistic about the absence of 
progress since the July Package.  The best thing was to face the reality, look forward and redouble 
efforts to accelerate the work when Members resu med in September.  China's aim for Hong Kong was 
to achieve consensus on full modalities in agricultu re and NAMA, make substantive and substantial 
progress in services both on market access and rules, make the work on rules and trade facilitation 
catch up with other areas of negotiations and obtain a balance in the whole Doha Work Programme.  
For an improved and strengthened multilateral trading system and to have economic and social 
benefits to all Members, a successful Hong Kong Conference and successful conclusion of the round 
by the end of 2006 was needed.   
274. The representative of Jamaica
 said that Members had set certain general objectives and 
deadlines which they had not been able to meet.  His delegation shared the disappointment.  Members 
had to bear in mind, however, that they had em barked on a major and very complex undertaking as  TN/C/M/19 
 Page 43 
 
 
 prescribed in the Doha mandate and within the 200 4 July Framework Agreement.  They would need 
to redouble their efforts and importantly draw appropriate lessons.   
275. In agriculture, all Members had acknowledged th at it was a very difficult and complex area 
with divergent and conflicting interests.  In this  connection, the market access pillar had received the 
most attention.  It also was the most critical p illar for Jamaica.  Emphasis in the negotiations on the 
market access pillar had been placed on the elements  and structure of tariff reduction, including the 
number of bands, the nature of the formula to be applied within the bands and the thresholds for 
defining the bands.  As a result, certain developmen t aspects of the agriculture negotiations such as 
Special Products, the establishment of a Special Sa feguard Mechanism, the treatment of countries 
with ceiling bindings and preference erosion had received much less attention and had not moved 
satisfactorily.  This was based on the premise that some issues had to be addressed before others.  
Therefore, while the entire agriculture negotiations were now in a serious time bind this was even 
more so the case for the issues that  were of special concern to count ries like Jamaica.  In respect of 
Special Products, for example, Jamaica had very high expectations.   
276. In the domestic support pillar, Jamaica had hoped that a decision would have been taken by 
the end of July to exempt developing countries from the requirement to reduce de-minimis .  This 
would have been an important confidence building measure and was an opportunity that had been 
missed.   
277. In the export competition pillar, while Jamaica recognized that paragraph 24 of the July 
Framework had provided for the disciplines on expor t credits to make appropriate provision for 
differential treatment for LDCs and NFIDCs, the e xport interests of small developing countries which 
needed to make use of export credits should not be unreasonably prejudiced by new disciplines.  
These countries were either involved already or woul d be involved in deve loping and launching new 
agri-export products.  They would need to use export credits and export guarantees on appropriate 
terms.  Flexibility for small developing count ries should be accommodated by the terms of the 
agreement to be reached on this issue, pursuant to paragraph 18 of the July Framework Agreement on 
agriculture.   
278. On STEs, Jamaica wished to en sure that developing countries particularly the small 
developing ones were exempt from new disciplines as their exports by these entities were too small to 
create market distortions.   
279. On NAMA, the situation was similar in a sense to agriculture.  A lot of work had been done in 
certain areas which were viewed as key to progr ess in the negotiations i.e. the formula and the 
treatment of unbound lines.  But less work had b een done on issues such as flexibilities and less than 
full reciprocity which had to wait the resolution of the so-called key issues.  Jamaica did not agree 
with this approach.  The principles of flexibilities and less than full reciprocity were stand-alone 
issues.  Jamaica was very concerned that in light of the delay in addressing other issues of importance such as those in paragraphs 6, 8 and 16 of Annex B of the July Framework, and the assumption that 
all these issues would be addressed and fall into pl ace by Hong Kong, there was the risk that the 
genuine interests of Members in these areas woul d not receive the attention that was necessary and 
warranted.  Jamaica did not wish these issues to be addressed in a rushed, 'pressure cooker' 
atmosphere.  Members therefore needed to redouble th eir efforts now not later, and this needed to be 
combined with a high dose of political will and an even higher dose of genuine understanding 
amongst Members if they were to achieve their desired goals.   
280. The understanding that Jamaica called for was one  that recognized that the results of these 
negotiations in NAMA should reflect the vulnerab ilities of developing countries such as Jamaica 
through appropriate flexibility and moderation in commitments.  This was the intent of the proposal 
that some CARICOM members had put forwar d in the NAMA Group and which was attracting TN/C/M/19 
Page 44  
 
 growing support.  Jamaica believed that modera tion in commitments and flexibilities were fully 
consistent with the spirit and substa nce of the Doha mandate.  It noted that there appeared to be an 
assumption that developing countries including sma ll vulnerable Members, would be expected to 
make tariff cuts in this development round which far exceeded what developed countries with their 
competitive industries, had undertaken to make ten years ago in the Uruguay Round.  Jamaica 
strongly believed that the principle of less than full r eciprocity should be a part of the core formula in 
order to achieve a substantial difference in outco mes in the reduction commitments of developed and 
developing countries.  Further, Jamaica attached gr eat importance to the separation of the principle of 
less than full reciprocity in reduction commitmen ts and S&D treatment as given effect through 
flexibilities.  Like in the agriculture negotiations, Jamaica was also concerne d about the likelihood of 
preference erosion, and reiterated that the protecti on of preference margins for products traded with its 
key partners was of key importanc e to it in all negotiations.   
281. On services, Jamaica believed that the negotia tions were in a better shape now following 
recent submissions of initial and revised offers.  It  was one of those countries which had submitted its 
conditional initial offer on services and had done so in  a spirit of constructive engagement and in an 
effort to contribute to advancing the negotiations.  Jamaica had noted that offers were weak in the 
areas of interests to developing countries such as in m ode 4.  It was aware of the concerns and in some 
cases the disappointment of some Members regarding the lack of progress in the services negotiations 
and its implications for balance in the overall negotiations.  However, Jamaica cautioned against 
attempts to introduce at this stage other approach es which would erode or eliminate the flexibility 
provided under the GATS and in the negotiating modalities.  It was very important that the process of 
liberalization was approached and undertaken progressi vely with due regard to the implications for 
building domestic capacity, preserving policy space and strengthening and diversifying services 
exports.  He said the GATS had pr ovided scope for this kind of appr oach through the flexibilities that 
were built into the Agreement itself.  A renewed sens e of commitment to this principle might assist in 
alleviating some of the anxieties that existed among some developing Members.   
282. He emphasized the capacity constraints in the ser vices negotiations which had to be borne in 
mind.  Some Members did not have the capacity or the knowledge base in respect of other markets to 
make commercially meaningful requests yet they were  expected to make generous offers.  He said it 
was not healthy in a development round for a significant number of developing countries to participate merely by making gener ous offers without actively making requests.  Jamaica did not have 
real data on this aspect of the negotiations so as to  be able to assess the imbalance in terms of the 
actual pursuit of offensive and defensive interests on the part of developing Members.  However, from 
its experience in bilaterals it knew that its developed partners were well equipped to participate 
actively and aggressively in the request-offer process.  It was regrettable that adequate attention was 
not being paid in this development round to ensu re that developing countries were the primary 
beneficiaries of the services negotiations compared with developed countries that already accounted 
for 80 per cent of global services exports.   
283. Development was a key objective of trade and was at the heart of the Doha mandate.  Any 
evaluation of the development content of the Doha  Agenda had therefore to take into account S&D 
treatment.  Jamaica was di sappointed that the negotiations aime d at making S&D treatment provisions 
more precise, effective and operational had not prog ressed significantly thus far.  Several deadlines 
had been missed, including the deadline set in the 2004 July Framework Agreement for "clear 
recommendations" by July 2005.   
284. Jamaica was aware that the current focus in the CTD Special Session was on the LDCs 
Agreement-specific proposals and that efforts had b een made to revise several proposals which were 
currently being considered by Members.  Jamaica hoped that this would help to advance the work 
post-July.  It also called for work to commen ce and intensify on the other Agreement-specific 
proposals submitted by developing countries.  Ja maica welcomed the Chairman's recommendation  TN/C/M/19 
 Page 45 
 
 
 that after the summer break the other proposals shoul d also be considered.  It believed that there 
needed to be greater constructive engagement on S& D by all Members.  It was critical that the Hong 
Kong package included a substantial agreement on this  issue.  With only a few months before the 
Sixth Ministerial Jamaica urged that work on all S& D should be expedited with a view to bringing 
them to an acceptable conclusion as soon as possi ble.  He emphasized that although Jamaica 
recognized that it was part of the wider Work Pr ogramme, meaningful implementation of paragraph 
35 of the Doha Declaration on Small Economies as an  important aspect of a substantive development 
outcome at Hong Kong.   
285. On trade facilitation, he shared the positive assessm ent of the work of this Group.  This was a 
very bright spot in the Work Programme but Memb ers were far from being out of the woods.  More 
than 50 proposals were on the table and Members woul d need to move quickly to establish, even on a 
preliminary basis, which proposals they could poten tially reach agreement on and thus which trade 
facilitation measures could potentially become the s ubject of an outcome which, according to the 
footnote to Annex D did not have a predetermined fo rm.  Equally important and to ensure agreement 
on a package of trade facilitation measures at Hong Kong, Members needed to move quickly to give 
operational content to those aspects of the tr ade facilitation modalities which explicitly linked 
commitments to be assumed to the provision of t echnical assistance and capacity building and to the 
implementation capacities of deve loping countries and LDCs.   
286. Jamaica expressed appreciation to those Member s and International Organizations that had 
recognized the importance of this aspect and w ho had begun to put forward initiatives.  However, 
regrettably, Jamaica was not entirely persuaded that the break with the past that the trade facilitation 
modalities represented in this regard was fully recognized and accepted by  all.  In the past, developing 
countries had assumed commitments and then sought and hoped for technical assistance to facilitate 
implementation of these commitments that had not al ways been forthcoming.  The trade facilitation 
modalities had reversed this.  The existence of  implementation capacity was intended to be a 
precondition for the assumption of commitments by developing countries and LDCs.  This was an 
important element of the development content of the Doha Round which had to be respected and not 
become another development casualty.  Jamaica hoped this would be borne fully in mind by all Members as they moved to Hong Kong and beyond – and particularly as they sought to determine the 
exact nature and form of an outcome in the area of trade facilitation. 
287. On rules, he said that the Doha mandate had stated that account had to be taken of the 
developmental aspects of regional trade agreements .  A large constituency of the WTO membership 
attached great importance to the mandate in respect  of RTAs and Jamaica urged that close attention 
should be paid to this which should be treated as an important aspect of overall balance.  He 
welcomed important proposals on RTAs and deve lopment, such as those from the ACP Group, the 
European Communities and China.   
288. In concluding, he expressed deep concern about  the state of the development-dimension of 
the negotiations which Ministers in Doha had placed at the heart of the process.  The negotiations had 
not yet been concluded, but if Members sought to  assess the development component at the current 
stage of the Round they would find it sadly lack ing.  This was the case for specific development 
issues that were being addressed in the CTD Special  Session and in terms of development as a cross-
cutting issue in the negotiations.  Paradoxically, Jama ica had found that its developed partners were 
taking defensive positions precisely in those area s and on those matters where they should be 
accommodating the interests of developing count ries, while taking aggressive and sometimes 
uncompromising postures where their own interests would be served vis- a- vis  those of developing 
countries, in areas such as NAMA and services.  Th is could not be the road to a development 
outcome.   TN/C/M/19 
Page 46  
 
 289. At the outset, Jamaica had spoken of the importa nce of drawing lessons.  He believed that a 
course correction was needed.  Some of Jamaica's partners seemed to be lieve that development 
concerns could be taken care of merely through increasing liberalization.  This lay the ground for 
insufficient attention to issues such as the poten tial for harming vulnerable domestic industries and 
small farmers, underestimating adjustment costs and even of the potential for causing and/or 
deepening macro-economic imbalances.  Jamaica be lieved that unless Members acted in a focused 
and sympathetic way to redress these matters, the development aspect of the Round might end up 
being largely in the nature of a deficit.  Jam aica remained committed to the negotiations and to 
pursuing its interests as a small vulnerable economy w ith a view to arriving at a fair and equitable 
outcome.   
290. The representative of Korea
 said that Members had unfortunately not taken advantage of the 
leadership and hard work of the Chairman and Chairs of negotiating bodies.  Korea was deeply 
disappointed with Members' inability to produce fi rst approximations.  This was a sobering moment 
of truth which reminded them once again how difficult it was to make even modest progress.  However, Members could not afford to dwell on the fa ilure or play the blame game.  Instead, they had 
to focus on finding ways to move forward.   
291. Fortunately, Members did have some groundwork to build on.  There was a shared 
understanding on the need to find middle ground fo r the tariff reduction formula in agriculture.  
Growing consolidation of positions on some key issues among the majority of the Members in 
NAMA had also been witnessed.  In services there w as a broad recognition for the need to explore 
ways that could complement the request-offer approach.  A huge amount of technical work had also 
been under way in other negotiating areas.   
292. Certainly, Members were sure to face an enormous task after the summer break.  But that 
should not stop them in their work toward producing a solid and balanced outcome at Hong Kong.  To 
achieve that goal they needed to work in a far more  practical and focused manner.  In this regard his 
delegation thanked the Chairman for having outl ined a structured work programme including 
homework that had to be done in August by all Members to restart substantive work in early 
September and a checkpoint in October.  He tha nked the chairs of each negotiating group for their 
suggested work programmes after the summer break.   
293. From September Members had to start to think in terms of a comprehensive overall balanced 
package and trade-offs to be made between different issues and areas.  They n eeded to recalibrate the 
linkage between the agriculture negotiations and othe r areas.  Korea agreed that agriculture was a key 
to the overall progress of the negotiations.  But after the summer break Members simply did not have 
time to wait for the progress in agriculture to make movement in other areas.  Members could have an outline of a balanced outcome of the Hong Kong Mini sterial only when the negotiations in all areas 
moved in parallel.   
294. On agriculture, Korea agreed that market access was the area that required the most 
immediate attention.  His delegation would work  with other Members to find a reasonable middle 
ground for the tariff reduction formula.  By definition such a middle ground should be able to accommodate vital interests of all Members.  In th is regard he wished to underline the enormous 
difficulties that tariff capping posed to some importing countries, including Korea.   
295. He stressed the importance of flexibility within the formula.  This was a key to achieving a 
high ambition while addressing the sensitivities and di verse realities in the agricultural sectors of 
Members.  All Members understood that they had to be effective and expeditious in moving the 
negotiations forward.  At the same time, they could not afford to have another crisis by leaving out 
some key interests from the process.  Members ha d to make sure that the process had a fair  TN/C/M/19 
 Page 47 
 
 
 representation of diverse interests including of those who were to benefit most and those who were to 
concede most.   
296. On NAMA, Korea endorsed the assessment of th e Chair of the NAMA Group that finding a 
common ground on the concrete structure of the tariff  reduction formula was a first priority.  Without 
finding a formula that could bring about commerciall y meaningful market access improvements while 
providing appropriate flexibilities fo r developing countries it would be extremely difficult to move 
forward.  His delegation was a little upbeat to hear that Members had made some progress towards convergence on this issue.  Korea continued to be lieve that a simple Swiss formula equipped with 
appropriate flexibilities for developing country Memb ers was the best option.  In this respect, he 
recalled that the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Trade Ministers had agreed to a simple 
Swiss formula with coefficients to be negotiated when  they had met in June in Cheju, Korea.  APEC 
economies not only account for 50 per cent of the worl d's trade, but also comprised developing and 
developed Members.  He said the mere fact that the APEC Trade Ministers had agreed to a simple 
Swiss formula was evident that it was a formula which could appropriately  accommodate the diverse 
interests and needs of both developed and developing Members.   
297. He agreed with the NAMA Chair that it was es sential that Members began a more meaningful 
negotiation on the actual numbers to be plugged into  the various coefficients.  Korea therefore hoped 
that in September Members would be able to move forward on a simple Swiss formula and start a real number-crunching exercise.   
298. Despite the disappointing outcome so far, Korea di d not believe that this July was a make or 
break point for the whole DDA negotiation.  But Me mbers would face a really daunting task in the 
autumn and they needed to back up their commitment with concrete actions so as to be able to 
produce a substantial outcome at Hong Kong.   
299. The representative of Thailand
 said that despite the tremendous efforts of the Chairman and 
the Chairs of the negotiating bodies to advance th e negotiations this had unfortunately not been 
possible.  Progress had been far too slow.  A lthough Members continued to show signs of 
commitments to conclude the Round by 2006 her dele gation could not help reflecting on the reality 
that the current situation was very grave.  Memb ers required not only stronger political will but also 
courage to move toward convergence in key elements of the negotiations.   
300. The success of the Doha Round depended si gnificantly on the progress of the agriculture 
negotiations.  It was thus essential that Members ke pt high ambitions in the agricultural negotiations 
and maintained the objective of securing full modalities by Hong Kong.  As agriculture was the key to 
social and economic development, Members could not a fford to lower their ambitions.  It would affect 
development and unavoidably slow down reform s in the NAMA and service sectors.  In this 
connection, her delegation agreed with Australia on behalf of the Cairns Group and Brazil on behalf 
of the G20.  Thailand called on the majors and those with high levels of agricultural protection to put 
an end to high stake brinkmanship and to begi n working on achievable compromise positions when 
Members resumed negotiations after the summer break.   
301. December was not far away and Thailand reali zed that to bridge the differences and make 
substantial progress within the short time remain ing from September to Hong Kong was challenging.  
Members had to work intensively and in a constr uctive and positive manner so that they would not 
miss this good opportunity.  The work that Members had done so far had laid down useful groundwork.  The middle ground that Members would agree upon should not jeopardize the high 
ambitions of the Doha mandate.   
302. Accordingly, the progress in the agriculture negotiations with high ambitions should bring 
about equally high ambitions in the areas of NAMA and services.  On NAMA, Thailand cautioned TN/C/M/19 
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 against the push for advancement of a liberaliza tion process without equity.  Members should be 
encouraged rather than punished for their good in tention to reduce tariffs of unbound lines.  Their acts 
of autonomous liberalization should be treated justifia bly so that they step up their reform processes.  
In this regard and without prejudice to paragra ph 8, any practicable methodology should be simple, 
transparent and produce the final bound rate, post formula application, which should generate an 
equitable outcome and preserve a sufficient level of comfort for countries that had unbound tariffs at 
low applied rates.   
303. On services, negotiations on market access were  gaining momentum through the request-offer 
process with a good number of initial and revised offe rs.  Nevertheless, the question of quality of 
commitments posed a significant challenge.  In orde r to produce a balanced package of elements by 
Hong Kong Members needed to take into account the progress made on rules including on Emergency 
Safeguard Measures and domestic regulations.  The different levels of de velopment and political 
sensitivity in certain sectors should also be considered.   
304. Lastly, she emphasized that Thailand wished to see a concrete balance across all areas of 
negotiations in Hong Kong.  It considered devel opment and rules as critical parts of the Hong Kong 
deal.  On rules, if full modalities for agriculture  and NAMA were what Memb ers aimed for in Hong 
Kong, Thailand expected a similar level of developm ent in the rules area.  Thailand therefore urged 
the Chairman of the Rules Negotiating Group to wo rk intensively with Members after the summer 
break with a view to delivering clear and specific guidelines by Hong Kong on how to solve issues of real interest and concern to Members and enable th em to engage in intensive text-based negotiations 
post Hong Kong.  Thailand remained committed to wo rk constructively with others with a view to 
reaching a substantial breakthrough by Hong Kong.  It hoped that all Members would demonstrate 
their maximum flexibility and utmost willingness to c ooperate with one another in order to achieve 
this deal.   
305. The representative of Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela
 said that his delegation had taken 
note of the concern expressed by the Chairman and of  the various reports that had been presented.  He 
stressed that any attempt to assess the current status  of the negotiations had to consider, as a key 
parameter, the development dimension – the exte nt to which these negotiations had reflected the 
premises that had given rise to the Doha Round i.e. the promotion of fair international trade in the 
interests of the developing countries, improved ma rket access for their products, S&D treatment and 
the development of production and trade capacity through international trade.   
306. He thanked the chairmen of the negotiating bodies on rules, trade and environment and trade 
facilitation for the balanced contents of their reports .  With respect to agriculture, he said that since 
there had been no real progress on the nature and structure of the tiered tariff reduction formula 
whatever approach was adopted had to take acc ount of the particular characteristics of each 
developing country to ensure that space was pr eserved for the implementation of active policies 
targeting progress and socio-economic development of  the populations concerned.  He reiterated the 
importance of Special Products and the establishmen t of a Special Safeguard Mechanism for countries 
like Venezuela that were in the process of implem enting agricultural development policies.  He hoped 
that all the concerns expressed by the developing countries would be taken into account and that S&D 
treatment would become an integral part of the negotiations as had been stipulated in the Doha 
Declaration and that the Round would live up to its name, the "development Round".   
307. He said his delegation recognised the importance of tropical products and preference erosion 
for the developing countries and believed that thei r concerns should be addressed in accordance with 
the provisions of the July Framework.  It was aw are that merely modifying the market access pillar 
would not suffice to correct the agricultural distortions caused by heavy production and export subsidies granted by a large group of Members.  He  also stressed that any disciplines adopted had to 
take account of the particular realities in certa in countries which despite having bound domestic  TN/C/M/19 
 Page 49 
 
 
 support measures and granted certain types of subsid ies did not cause any distortion to international 
trade in agricultural products.   
308. His delegation believed that de minimis  support for developing countries should be exempted 
from any reduction commitment since it was fundament al to the formulation of policies designed to 
address food security and rural development needs in the areas concerned.   
309. On NAMA, regarding the tariff reduction formula he said that his delegation rejected any 
proposal that departed from what had been envi saged in the Doha Work Programme which had 
clearly stipulated that the reduction mechanism s hould be a formula which had to take fully into 
account the special needs and interests of deve loping and least-developed country participants, 
including through less than full reciprocity in reduction commitments.   
310. He said if the various formula proposals subm itted by developed countries were subjected to 
simulation exercises the results would yield levels of  reduction in the tariff uni verse that were out of 
proportion and went beyond what was tolerable for th e economies of developing countries.  This was 
particularly true in the fiscal area where there was lesser impact on developed countries which introduced less than proportionate cuts in exchange  for secure access for thei r already consolidated 
industrial clusters to industrially emerging market s or growing markets such as Venezuela.  This 
involved a commitment that would determine the future  of its national enterprises and hence its future 
economic development.   
311. He said for Venezuela the reduction formula had to take account of the following elements: 
preserving policy space for developing countries, th eir development needs which had not been 
properly reflected in the proposals on the structur e of the formula specifically the simple Swiss 
formula, dependence on customs and border taxes as a principal or supplementary source of revenue.  
Most developing country economies barely earned en ough from this source of revenue.  This was not 
merely a matter of ensuring survival but also a matter of improving the living standard of peoples in 
developing countries in a dignified manner and with  due respect to their particularities.  Other 
elements were preserving small and medium industr ies in developing country economies, avoiding 
indiscriminate tariff cutting on the basis of criteri a exogenous to the WTO which far from reflecting 
the mandate comprised elements of convenien ce for outside players, flexibilities and price 
adjustments to offset the erosion of preferences, recognizing the existence of asymmetries in the level 
of development and size of developing country  economies, the treatment of unbound tariff lines a 
situation which concerned many LDCs and  in cluding a genuine development dimension.   
312. The tariff reduction process had to be conducted at a pace and at levels at which economies 
could guarantee the satisfactory use of flexibilities and economic development,  bearing in mind less 
than full reciprocity and S&D treatment as cross-cu tting elements in the negotiations.  His delegation 
recalled that all of these aspects were covered by Article XXVIII bis of GATT and reaffirmed in paragraph 16 of the Doha Ministerial Declaration.   
313. Regarding the report of the Services Chairman, he  said it was not an objective summary of the 
discussions of 27 and 30 June and 1 July 2005 when  the Special Session had met.  He referred in 
particular to Annex 1 of the report which had set  out to summarize the sectoral, modal and rules-
related discussions in the framework of the exam ination of the progress achieved.  The annex had 
been included for the first time and did not have the approval of Members since they had not been 
consulted.  Secondly, the report had presented a cris is scenario as reflected in paragraph 4.  This 
alleged crisis had favoured the use of certain be nchmarks as demonstrated in paragraph 5: "A 
considerable number of Members recognize that th e request-offer method alone is not producing the 
desired results."  He said the report did not reflect  the opinion of a considerable number of countries 
that did not share this vision.   TN/C/M/19 
Page 50  
 
 314. As far as his delegation was c oncerned the modalities for the ma rket access negotiations were 
set out in Articles IV and XIX of the GATS and reaffirmed in Annex C of the 2004 July Decision.  According to these provisions priority had to be given to the sectors of export interest in the 
developing countries.   
315. Thirdly his delegation was concerned about part III of the report on future work.  It did not 
mention the rules aspects of the services negotiations  although the report had stressed that "a number 
of Members underlined the central importance th ey attach to a successful outcome on Emergency 
Safeguard Measures".  His delegation considered that  the work programme for the negotiation of rules 
should progress in parallel with the market acces s negotiations.  The report had not included the 
assessment of trade in services in overall terms and on a sectoral basis with reference to the objectives 
of the GATS and of Article IV in particular, as sti pulated in paragraphs 14 and 15 of the Guidelines 
and Procedures for the Negotiations on Trade in Se rvices, which had been reaffirmed in the Doha 
Ministerial Declaration as the basis for continui ng the negotiations.  Regarding the Chairman's 
intention to engage in intensive consultations on a broad range of issues, he said that his delegation 
had noted that in the recent past consultations ha d been carried out on an informal basis making it 
difficult to follow the process and its results.  Cons equently he said that this was a practice which 
should be discontinued.   
316. His delegation would therefore not accept the report unless it included a reference to the 
opposition of many countries to the change in nego tiating modalities as well as the implications and 
conclusions deriving.  Similarly, he requested th e removal of Annex 1 which had been the result of 
restricted consultations in which his delegati on had not been invited to participate.   
317. Finally, he stressed the importance of transparency  in the negotiations particularly in the final 
July phase and said that Members should not overl ook the need for transparency as they sought 
agreements.  Progress had to be continuous and incl usive if Members were to avoid a last-minute 
syndrome in the future.   
318. The representative of Barbados
 associated her delegation with the statements by Indonesia on 
behalf of the G33 and by Benin on behalf of the ACP.  She said that her delegation shared the 
Chairman's concern at the slow pace of progress in  advancing the negotiations and agreed that the 
membership’s focus should now be on achieving tangib le results at the Sixth Ministerial Conference 
in December.  It was critically important that Members did not fail at Hong Kong.  In order to 
enhance chances of success Members'  objectives for the December Ministerial Conference should be 
both realistic and balanced.  In this  regard Barbados considered that  Members' best hope for achieving 
real progress from the present meeting to December was to keep the development dimension at the 
forefront of the negotiations.   
319. In the area of agriculture, she said that Barbados attached fundamental importance to the 
issues of Special Products and the Special Safe guard Mechanism and the need for these two S&D 
tools to be realized in a meaningful and effectiv e manner.  With regard to Special Products initial 
substantive issues for agreement were the principle of self-selection and the understanding that further 
elaboration of this mechanism had to be aimed at operationalizing the existing criteria of food 
security, rural development and livelihood secu rity and not adding new criteria.   
320. In the area of services, Barbados believed that there needed to be more focus on attaining the 
development targets in these negotiations on the ba sis of the Negotiating Guidelines and Annex C of 
the July 2004 package as well as through the m eaningful interpretation of GATS Article IV and 
XIX.2. Members had therefore to strive for an outc ome which addressed the balance of interest of all 
Members and effectively facilitated the par ticipation of developing countries through the 
liberalization of market access in sectors and modes of  supply of interest to them.  However, market 
access was only one component of the services negotia tions.  The absence of a set of multilaterally  TN/C/M/19 
 Page 51 
 
 
 developed rules regarding safeguards, subsidies and domestic regulation could undermine the market 
access component.   
321. In the area of NAMA, Barbados remained convin ced that the tariff reduction formula used in 
these development-oriented negotiati ons had to be suited to developing countries’ trade profiles and 
their ability to offer and sustain concessions.  In  this context, she recalled that CARICOM had 
proposed a development-oriented tariff reduction a pproach which was fully in accordance with the 
paragraph 16 mandate on less than full reciprocity in  reduction commitments.  This proposal remained 
on the table.  Barbados understood other countries’ ambitions to secure aggressive market access and 
appreciated their capacity to make use of such opportunities.  Barbados was not seeking to block 
anyone’s ambition but simply needed to have its situation recognized and accommodated.  A tariff 
reduction approach which addressed some countri es’ high ambition requirements and offensive 
interests would decimate the miniscule industrial sector in countries like Barbados.  This was not a 
result that it could live with.   
322. Less than full reciprocity and S&D treatment were integral and cross-cutting elements of the 
Doha paragraph 16 mandate.  Flexibilities could not be  made conditional on ambition.  This would be 
contrary to the spirit of both paragraph 16 and th e DDA.  The treatment of unbound tariffs had also to 
be informed by development-oriented principles.   
323. In the area of rules, the importance of the use of export subsidies as a development tool by 
small vulnerable economies such as Barbados had to be  taken into consideration in the negotiations.  
Subsidies were one of the fundamental tools ne eded by countries like Barbados to implement 
development policies aimed at enhancing their inte gration into the multilateral trading system.  The 
importance of the discussions on fisheries subsidies had also be recognized.  The fisheries industry 
was an area of untapped potential for many developing countries and any agreed rules in this area should recognize the economic and social importance of fisheries in these economies.   
324. The discussions on RTAs were also of great im portance to Barbados.  There was a need to 
have appropriate levels of flexib ility in Article XXIV of the GATT to allow for real and meaningful 
S&D for developing countries in RTAs involving developed and developing countries.  There had 
been a call for text-based negotiations to begin in the rules negotiations. Barbados agreed that the 
identification phase should be completed.  However,  it emphasized that meaningful attention had to 
be paid to the participation of small developing countries in these negotiations.  The technical nature 
of these negotiations and the limited resources of  many developing countries had severely hindered 
their level of participation in the negotiations in some of these areas and every effort should be made 
to increase the engagement of all developi ng countries on these important issues.   
325. Barbados recognized the economic  benefits that could result  from enhanced and more 
transparent trade facilitation methods.  However, di scussions in the negotiating group had to continue 
to place capacity building, technical assistance and S& D at the heart of the debate.  The mandate of 
the negotiating group which recognized the importan ce of these issues had to be fully honoured.  
Specific mention had also to be made of footnote on e of Annex D of the modalities which stated that 
the aims of the negotiations were “without prejudice to the possible format of the final results of the 
negotiations and would allow consid eration of different forms of outcomes.”  She said this provision 
had to be honoured.   
326. In the area of small economies, she said that  special attention should be accorded to the 
concrete proposals and solutions which would be submitted by the proponents to the negotiating 
groups.  It was Barbados' expectation that the ne gotiating groups would be guided to specifically 
address the trade-related problems of small vulnera ble economies and to consider small economies’ 
concrete proposals in an expeditious and timely ma nner in order to comply with the Doha mandate 
and the July 2004 Decision.   TN/C/M/19 
Page 52  
 
 327. In the area of outstanding implementation issues, she said that meaningful solutions had to be 
found.  In the area of S&D treatment, a concrete r esult had to emerge from the mandate contained in 
paragraph 12 of the Doha Deci sion on Implementation-related Issu es and Concerns.  In addition, 
meaningful, effective and substantive S&D provisions  had to be incorporated into all negotiating 
modalities to be agreed at Hong Kong.   
328. She noted that it was vitally important that  in all the discussions Members ensured 
transparency, inclusiveness a nd respect for the multilateral nature of the WTO.   
329. Ambassador Jara (Chile), Chairman of th e Special Session of the Council for Services,
 
responding to the statement by Venezuela on his report said that Venezuela had made a profoundly wrong assessment which had affected the integrity of the process and of those who had worked in it.  
He said that following a note he had circulated , consultations open to all Members had been 
conducted on Annex 1.  Future work  of  subsidiary bodies of the Council for Services was a matter for 
each group and not for the Services Special Session.   
330. He said that the difference of opinion on the modalities for the services negotiations had been 
reflected in his report and recalled that the nego tiating modalities allowed for request-offer method be 
it multilateral or plurilateral.  He said that since the report had been made under his responsibility he 
would not remove the annex as a condition of accepting the report.  Lastly, he said his group had always operated on the basis of cons ultations open to all Members.   
331. The representative of Malaysia
 said that Malaysia attached great importance to the market 
access pillar in the agriculture negotiations.  In  the July 2004 Decision, the membership had 
acknowledged the sensitivities of certain Members and thus there was a provision for sensitive 
products in the framework.  His delegation realized that this had been important to achieving progress 
and on that basis it had gone along with that provis ion.  He said that other Members also had to 
recognise the sensitivities of other delegations, in cluding Malaysia.  Malaysia needed to see 
substantial improvement in market access and in this  context it argued that flexibilities, in addition to 
sensitive products, posed a real danger of undermin ing the promise of substantial improvement in 
market access for each product as provided for in the framework.   
332. On NAMA, Malaysia was sensitive to the trea tment of low and unbound tariffs.  Malaysia 
attached great importance to an equitable outcome an d one that ensured a certain level of comfort for 
all countries.  Members were familiar with the APEC Ministerial Decision on NAMA and that was 
due to the leadership of APEC in the negotiations .  However, like Thailand he reminded particularly 
the APEC Members that the APEC Ministerial Decisi on had decided that the shape and core elements 
of NAMA modalities should be commensurate with that  of agriculture and therefore they had to 
pursue the Decision by their Ministers on NAMA.   
333. The representative of St Kitts and Nevis  said he was also speaking on behalf of  Antigua and 
Barbuda , Dominica , St. Vincent and the Grenadines  and Grenada .  He said that their countries 
attached high value to achieving a balanced outcome  in the negotiations.  They had contributed much 
in the Uruguay Round with unbalanced returns.  They  aspired to ensure more  valuable returns this 
time in harmony with their developmental goals especially as this was a development round.   
334. Overall, they were disappointed but not complete ly downhearted about the state of play in the 
negotiations.  While Members had gaps on many issues, much was being consolidated among 
delegations in a way that at the very least politi cal decisions could be ma de which would hopefully 
lead to solutions.  They urged their trading partne rs to be more understanding of their needs so that 
mutual benefits could be gain ed from better cooperation.    TN/C/M/19 
 Page 53 
 
 
 335. He said that after four years of stalemate small economies had moved ahead albeit 
incrementally.  They appreciated the work that had been done by the proponents of small economies 
and expressed appreciation to those who had shown a willingness to at least hear them and allow the 
process to move from that position of stalemate.  Fo r those delegations that wished to go backwards 
on this issue they hoped that those delegations woul d realize that by workin g with them they were 
also helping the small economies to better understand their issues and gain acceptance.  A lack of 
understanding of their issues made it harder for them to accept issues of other delegations.  He 
expressed appreciation to the Chairman of the Dedicated Session of the Committee on Trade and 
Development for his efforts on behalf of the small economies proponents.   
336. Services was a very important area for their c ountries since they tended to significantly 
reliance on services trade.  He encouraged devel oped countries to make quality offers that would 
allow their service providers to trade.  Despite their capacity constraints they had entered the 
negotiations in good faith and opened new sectors with the expectation that others would do the same.  
They looked forward to more pos itive work in the subsidiary bodies and hoped to participate more 
effectively.  They encouraged the consultations to elaborate on the various proposals as their small 
delegations faced constraints in atte nding all meetings in the WTO.   
337. On NAMA, he said that the countries as well as  some of the OECS were co-sponsors and 
fully supported the proposal by the Caribbean for fo rmula reduction that took into account their level 
of development through tariff average and also a dded credit to take account of their particular 
circumstances.  As they had pointed out, the proposal signalled the necessity for an objective 
mechanism to account for development needs of sm all economy Members of the WTO.  They agreed 
that the fundamental element was the coefficient in a Swiss-type formula and they looked forward to 
some acceptance of the need for di fferentiated coefficients  sufficiently wide apart to take into account 
their developmental needs.  Clearly this S&D a pproach epitomized the conc ept of less than full 
reciprocity of paragraph 2 of Annex B of the July 2004 Decision.  They maintained that paragraph 8 
flexibilities in Annex B of the Decision were not op en to further negotiations as that flexibility had 
already been accepted.  They also noted that boun d tariffs were important to support their domestic 
needs and as such agreed that Members should negotiate bound tariffs as mandated and not applied 
tariffs.  They noted that consideration would have  to be given to small economies in some way to 
ensure that they got at least a minimum from this round.   
338. On agriculture, they were disappointed. Member s were not any closer to resolving issues 
important to the development of the group of  these countries such as the Special Safeguard 
Mechanism, Special Products, long standing preferen ces and formula reduction.  They hoped to have 
more work that incorporated their issues as articul ated in the negotiations.  They asked for their 
trading partners to understand their needs so that they  in turn could understand theirs.  In this regard 
they supported the statement by Benin on behalf of the ACP Group.   
339. On trade facilitation, the group was pleased with so me of the bilateral consultations they had 
had and hoped to see the issues translate in the negotiating group.  They noted that given their small 
delegations it was difficult for them to always fo llow work in the Group, but that the issue was 
important to their developmental goals.  They enco uraged preciseness not only in the discussions on 
specific issues, but also on S&D and technical assi stance along a parallel path.  They looked forward 
to a narrowing of proposals in the next quarter and clear guidelines on the way to Hong Kong on 
where and what Members would do in 2006 in a holistic way.   
340. On rules, they wished to see fisheries disciplines that took into account the needs of small 
developing countries.  They also encouraged a be tter understanding for the uniqueness of their small 
islands and the need to promote local industr ies while protecting their environment.   TN/C/M/19 
Page 54  
 
 341. They recognized that to allow for converge nce consultation among trading partners was 
important.  While they were small delegations they encouraged the inclusion of their countries in the 
discussions and a proper reporting on the issues to ensu re that they were on board to sign off on 
important issues.  It was vital to include at least  one CARICOM country to ensure their comfort with 
transparency in these negotiations.  They expected a balanced outcome in Hong Kong that they could 
sell to their constituents back home.  They looked forward to diligently working with their trading 
partners to ensure that they could come closer to convergence by Hong Kong on key issues and set the 
appropriate pace for 2006.   
342. The representative of Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela
 in response to the comments made by 
the Services Chair on his delegation's assessment of the services report said that his delegation did not 
agree with the response and considered the report to be unbalanced and confusing.   
343. The representative of Uganda  associated his delegation with the statement made by Egypt on 
behalf of the African Group and Bangl adesh on behalf of the LDCs.   
344. On agriculture, he reiterated Uganda's need for increased and utili zable market access 
openings for LDCs.  In parallel it was critical that longstanding preferences in agriculture remained 
undisturbed.  He stressed his delegation's interest in  the cotton issue as it was also an exporter and was 
having difficulties in this sector.  He emphasized th at Uganda had interests in other areas in the 
agriculture negotiations.   
345. On NAMA, Uganda needed an outcome that did not harm its longstanding preferences.  In 
this regard, a positive outcome to the treatment of non-reciprocal trade pref erences remained central 
to Uganda's focus.   
346. On services, Uganda shared the view that the overall quality of offers remained poor and its 
analysis did not reveal new market openings.  Mark ets remained closed in the sectors and modes of 
export interest to Uganda.  It was disappointed with the slow progress on the Modalities for the Special Treatment of LDCs.  In its attempt to capture their essence, Uganda  had not onl y presented a 
group request through the LDCs but had also gone ahead  to make targeted Uganda specific requests.  
There had not been any positive response here and the picture continued to look very bleak.  Uganda 
wished the Doha Round to deliver ma rket access in sectors of export interest to it.  These extended 
beyond the traditional professional categories and into  semi-skilled service providers other than 
skilled professionals.  Uganda ca lled upon Members to respond pos itively to this.  He expressed 
concern for the proposed shift in negotiation strategy.   In Uganda's view what was important was to 
have real commitment from Members to open up their markets.   
347. In trade facilitation Uganda was still hopeful th at the negotiations would deliver additional 
technical and financial assistance to address its li mited negotiation and implementation capacities.  He 
recalled that a fundamental aim of the negotiatio ns in trade facilitation was the enhancement of 
technical assistance and support for capacity building.   
348. Uganda awaited a positive outcome on the issue of TRIPs and Public Health and looked 
forward to a permanent and lasting solution to this problem through amendment of the TRIPs 
Agreement.  There was also an urgent need to address the outstanding implementation issues which so 
far, had not received adequate attention.   
349. Uganda supported the request for a waiver ma de by the United States in favour of sub-
Saharan African countries under the AGOA initiative.  Th is was an initiative that had proved to be of 
great use to Uganda particularly in the area of  textiles and apparel products.  There had been 
tremendous benefit from this initiative through invest ment, employment creation and the trickle down 
effect in terms of reducing poverty.  As an LDC, Uganda was not yet in a position to compete  TN/C/M/19 
 Page 55 
 
 
 effectively and it appealed to the membership to c onsider and support this request for a waiver in a 
timely and expeditious manner.   
350. Uganda continued to be constr uctively engaged in the Committee on Trade and Development.  
He recalled that the purpose of this exercise was to make S&D treatment more precise, effective and 
operational.  The intended result of the process was that the provisions became more user-friendly for 
LDCs.  It was Uganda's hope that some Member s could put aside their hard positions, and allow 
LDCs to reap benefit through the multilateral tradi ng system.  Uganda could not help but express its 
disappointment with the way negotiations were movi ng on this issue.  It was perhaps important to 
remind Members that the LDCs were the weakest and most vulnerable Members of the Organization.  It was Uganda's hope that this exercise would result, inter alia , in new, secure and predictable market 
access opportunities bound within th e WTO framework.  The imagina tions in some quarters about 
trade diversion effects of its proposals were merely  illusions.  This exercise should be viewed as one 
aimed at giving LDCs a chance to develop and Members should not lose sight of this issue.   
351. He said that Doha was about de velopment.  It was important to bring development back to the 
heart of discussions in various negotiating bodies so as to allow poor countries to reap trade 
opportunities out of this Round.  At this stage, Ug anda could not help but be disappointed with the 
overall progress.   
352. The representative of Mauritius
 said that mainly development should guide the work of 
Members, particularly the development of the poor est, weakest and most vulnerable members of the 
organization.  Otherwise, the very essence of th e Doha Round which had development at its core 
would remain a dead letter.   
353. On NAMA he said that Mauritius with other countries of the ACP Group, had consistently 
been making the point that the outcome of the nego tiations should not result in the loss of market 
share of the weakest and most vulnerable Members of  the Organization due to the application of the 
formula to be agreed or to the pursuit of sectoral  initiatives.  Nor should it be devoid of the space 
required to pursue industrial policies.  Mauritius therefore urged that in developing modalities for 
NAMA, pursuant to the Doha mandate and Annex B of the July Framework, concerns related to 
policy space required to undertake industrial polici es as well as the erosion of trade preferences 
should be adequately addressed.  Failure to do so wo uld result in shaking the industrialization efforts 
of ACP countries and in an immediate loss of market share with socio-economic problem that would follow.  Since the margin of preference erosion would depend on the formula to be applied for reducing tariffs as well as modalities regarding sector al initiatives, although voluntary, it was crucial 
that these elements of the framework should be di scussed simultaneously so that Members reached a 
balanced decision that took on board the concerns a nd expectations of everyone.  Otherwise, it would 
be difficult to reconcile the interests of all Member s at the last hour and it would certainly then be 
difficult to reach consensus.   
354. He agreed with a number of previous interventi ons that these crucial elements needed to be 
addressed in parallel with finding the right formula.  He emphasized that the elements were intricately 
linked to the formula as well as to sectoral in itiatives.  The outcome of the negotiations should 
provide comfort to everybody.  Mauritius did not wish  to see a situation where market gains for some 
were at the expense of market losses for others, esp ecially those who by virtue of their vulnerability, 
required favourable market access conditions to secu re a share in world trade.  The ACP and the 
African Group had made practical proposals to finding solutions to the problem of preference erosion 
without unduly jeopardizing the process of trad e liberalization at the multilateral level for a 
transitional period to be agreed.  For Mauritius, th is was a fundamental issue that needed to be 
addressed as part of the Doha Package.   TN/C/M/19 
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 355. The representative of the Philippines
 said that the report of the Chairman had provided the 
necessary context and input for Members to reflect  on the way forward in the DDA negotiations.   
356. On agriculture, his delegation conveyed its a ppreciation to the Agriculture Chair for his 
efficient and vigorous leadership and it supported the statement by Brazil on behalf of the G20 and by 
Indonesia on behalf of the G33.  His delegation had been actively engaged in these negotiations in its 
determination to achieve meaningful results at this st age.  In addition to its individual participation, a 
significant part of its endeavours were positively reflect ed in the concrete contributions by the G20, in 
the collective inputs of the G33, as well as in joint undertakings of the Cairns Group. It was thus not 
surprising if at the present meeting it shared certain misgivings that the efforts and hard work devoted 
by many throughout this process had thus far not yielded results equal to its expectations.   
357. The Agriculture Chair's report was valuable in  pointing to issues where the negotiations had 
taken some steps forward and on items where careful  reflection and political decisions were essential.  
As Members went through the next phase of their work they should be guided by the suggestions on 
the way forward contained in the Agriculture Chair's report keeping in mind that this report could also 
have reflected the substantial discussions on Special  Products to assist in the post-summer resumption 
of negotiations.  Given the state of affairs it was now incumbent on Members to re-double their efforts 
in the fall to consolidate what had been gained over the past months and bridge the remaining gaps in 
order to achieve significant breakthroughs for meaningf ul results in agriculture that was the backbone 
of the DDA.   
358. On NAMA, his delegation believed the Chairm an’s commentary of the state of play 
represented a constructive and accurate reflection of where the negotiations stood.  Of importance to 
his delegation were the issues relating to the fo rmula for tariff reduction and low applied unbound 
tariffs.  With regard to the formula for tariff re duction, his delegation was prepared, if consensus 
could emerge, to work on the basis of the Swiss fo rmula, provided that pursuant to the principles of 
S&D treatment and less than full reciprocity, the coefficients should either be substantially or 
adequately differentiated to opera tionalize these two core elements of the mandate and that the level 
of ambition in NAMA should be balanced with and be commensurate to what was eventually 
achieved in the three pillars on agriculture.  His delegation agreed with China that the Pakistan 
proposal represented a feasible minimum in the NAMA negotiations assuming that there was a similar minimum ambition in the agriculture sector.   
359. With regard to the issue of unbound tariff lines at  low applied rates, his delegation was ready 
to work on the basis of a non-linear mark-up a pproach to establish the base rate for unbound tariff 
lines, provided the newly bound tariff lines post formula application preserved sufficient policy space 
to encourage and not to penalize autonomous liber alization efforts in the newly bound lines and 
provided further that the flexibilities provided in paragraphs 6, 8 and 9 already agreed to and 
embodied in the July 2004 Decision were preserve d at all times in the negotiating process.   
360. On trade facilitation, he agreed with the factua l report by the Chair and was grateful for the 
constructive and efficient manner in which balan ced and careful progress in this negotiating group 
had been achieved.  As mentioned by his delega tion during the last session of the Group, speaking on 
behalf of the Core Group, which with the recent membership of Nepal now totalled 20 developing and 
least developed countries from Africa, Asia and La tin America, it believed that after the summer 
break the compilation by the Secretariat in TN/TF/W/43/ Rev.1 of all the proposals tabled so far, along 
with new proposals that might still be forthcomi ng, could serve as the working basis from which the 
trade facilitation negotiations could proceed.  Hi s delegation was encouraged by the level of 
engagement by everyone in the negotiating group to  address the very important issue of technical 
assistance and capacity building.  It believed that  addressing this important issue boded well for the 
work of the Group on the basis of conditional trust and the expectation that substantial progress was 
achieved in other areas of the DDA of interest to developing countries.    TN/C/M/19 
 Page 57 
 
 
 361. The Philippines agreed that it was in the interest of all Members to participate in the services 
negotiations both to secure a positive outcome on services itself and in support of wider DDA 
objectives.  It believed that the July 2004 Decision in Annex C contained the way forward to allow the 
services negotiations to move expeditiously.  Afte r the summer break Members should intensify their 
negotiations and he expected the demandeurs  on market access to provide the leadership in giving 
genuine market access to developing countries in sectors of interest to them.   
362. In rectifying disparities in the services ne gotiations Members should focus on addressing 
asymmetries among the modes of supply.  Mode  4 was under-committed and presented the most 
important mode for integrating th e developmental dimension in th e services negotiations.  Treating 
this mode of supply as a sensitive sector was not ec onomically justified or feasible – any sensitivities 
should be balanced against economi c and developmental benefits or  addressed through economic tests 
or rules-based principles.  It was in this context  that the Philippines reiterated its view that market 
access and rules had to go together as had been re-a ffirmed recently by the APEC Trade Ministers in 
their Ministerial Statement in Jeju, Korea.  In GA TS rules, it was imperative that Members shaped the 
safety nets similar to those available in the goods sect or that were required to build and facilitate the 
confidence of domestic constituencies.   
363.  On TRIPS, the Philippines believed that th e report by the TRIPS Chairman captured the 
prevailing dynamics in the Special Session.  As a co-sponsor of the initial joint proposal TN/IP/W/5 
and a keen participant in the Special Session disc ussions and in the context of the GI extension 
technical work, it considered itself an impor tant stakeholder in these negotiations.   
364. With regard to the development and rules are as, his delegation agreed that parallel progress 
was essential in these areas during the post-summer period.  For practical purposes as well as in 
keeping with the development dimension of this r ound early resolution of these issues should be made 
in time for the Hong Kong Ministerial.  His dele gation also hoped that the other concerns of 
developing countries would be given priority resolu tion from the period from September to October in 
order to avoid problems of back load ing all these issues towards Hong Kong.   
365.  In closing, he reminded Members that devel oping countries had agreed to launch this round 
of negotiations on the premise that the existing imba lances in the multilateral trading system would be 
rectified.  His delegation expected that the Doha Development Round r esults would address this 
fundamental inequity.  It supported the Chairman's call that Members should ensure incorporation of 
the development dimension in this  Round and that a focus on substance rather than process would be 
the key to moving these negotiations forward.   
366. The representative of Chinese Taipei  said that his delegation shared the Chairman's 
sentiments expressed in his realistic assessment of the state of play in the negotiations.  His delegation had always agreed with the numerous warnings give n by the Chairman at previous meetings of the 
TNC since the beginning of the year.   
367. On agriculture, it was most regrettable that despite the constructive dialogue and serious 
engagement of so many participating Members ove r the past few weeks, wide gaps still remained, 
particularly in terms of their perceived levels of ambition and flexibility.  Also, there seemed to have 
been no significant political convergence on the key elemen ts of the three pillars - particularly market 
access and the Blue Box criteria of the domestic support pillar.  Nevertheless, his delegation 
recognized that the Agriculture Chair's good work had not been entirely in vain.  There were currently 
some useful proposals on the table which could help  Members to move ahead after the summer break.  
But they had to face the fact that to come up with  an agreed package of th e full agricultural modalities 
before the Hong Kong Ministerial was going to take a further massive effort in the coming months.  It 
would not be easy to find the right balance between the level of ambition and the amount of flexibility 
shown towards sensitive issues.   TN/C/M/19 
Page 58  
 
 368. There would also need to be political owners hip of the process and outcomes across the entire 
membership.  His delegation was pleased to hear r ecent reassurances from the Chairman that nothing 
would be decided until those Members with the greatest interests had reached agreement.   
369. Being a net food importer with a disadvantaged agriculture sector, his country, like the other 
G10 Members, supported the adoption of a more gradua l approach to agriculture policy reforms.  In 
this regard, his delegation wished to emphasize the following points.  Firstly, it was of crucial 
importance that adequate flexibilities be provided in the modalities of the market access pillar, 
including within the tariff reduction formula and in terms of the favourable tr eatment of both sensitive 
products and Special Products.  Concerning the treatment of sensitive products, Members should 
follow the Framework Agreement, which had stipulat ed that Members could designate an appropriate 
number of tariff lines to be treated as sensitive.  Moreover, sensitive products should be treated 
separately from other products.  Secondly, the idea of tariff capping, as suggested by some Members, 
was strongly opposed by his delegation.   
370. As a recently acceded Member his country ha d already made extensive and substantial 
commitments in the course of its accession compared  to those Members that participated in the 
Uruguay Round.  In order to have the necessary r oom to continue with the ongoing agricultural 
reform process, it was of crucial importance that adequate flexibilities should be provided to recently 
acceded Members in the design of the modalities.  His delegation understood that the specific 
flexibility provisions for recently acceded Members could only be t ackled after the core issues had 
been dealt with.  His delegation therefore reserved the right to put forward its proposals at a later 
stage. 
371. On NAMA, while it was regrettable that Members could not yet see any underlying 
convergence on the subject of a formula which was one  of the most important issues he highlighted 
the fact that the constructive dialogue that had recently taken place among Members would serve 
them well as they proceeded from the framework to full modalities. His delegation believed that 
NAMA was one of the most important items on the Doha agenda.  All Members were enjoying the 
economic benefits that their commitments on tariff reductions or eliminati on had brought through the 
previous rounds of negotiations.  His delegation al so shared the view that  NAMA was probably the 
area where Members could harvest the greatest benefits  from this current Round.   
372. His delegation was pleased to see that there had been some positive deve lopments on services 
since the last Special Session.  However, the quality of offers made by Members in general was still 
far from satisfactory.  His delegation shared the concerns expressed on a number of occasions by 
other delegations over the pace and progress of the services negotiations.  If Members were going to 
achieve something in this round and if they wanted to be able to demonstrate to their private sectors 
what they were doing for them, they needed a concre te and common baseline that reflected at least the 
currently existing levels of openness.   His delegation would also be willing to consider an alternative 
to the traditional request-offer approach that Member s were using if this would give them a better 
chance of expediting and completing the process.  Hi s delegation therefore suggested that some other 
kind of complementary approach should be explored.   
373. He said that development was a key component of the DDA.  He regretted that the LDC 
proposals had not achieved consensus after the intens ive meetings held over the past few weeks.  
However, Members now had a better understanding of  each others' positions through these meetings.  
His delegation thanked the Chairman of the CTD Special Session for his efforts and it strongly 
believed that Members would find a solution soon after the summer break.   
374. On anti-dumping, his delegation had been encour aged by the growing consensus for starting 
the text-based negotiations immediately after Hong K ong.  It stood ready to work closely with other 
Members after the summer break in a concerted effo rt to achieve a common understanding on the core  TN/C/M/19 
 Page 59 
 
 
 elements by December.  His delegation was hopefu l that the serious engagement of all Members 
concerned would give birth to the first legal draft soon after the Hong Kong Ministerial.   
375. He said that lessons learnt from Seattle and Ca ncùn were that if Members were going to move 
towards a successful conclusion in Hong Kong, it was of crucial importance that there was total 
inclusiveness and full transparency  in the process.  A failure in Hong Kong would be a disaster not 
just for the Doha Round but also for the entire multilateral trading system.  Another Ministerial 
Meeting without concrete progress following on from  Cancùn would call into serious question the 
commitment of Members to liberalize and the cred ibility of the WTO as a realistic forum for trade 
negotiation.  His delegation coul d also see further proliferation of FTAs and RTAs which would 
undermine the basic principles of the WTO.  Therefor e, Members simply could not afford a failure in 
Hong Kong.   
376. It was obvious that Members had to now intensify their efforts to clear up all outstanding 
issues by the time of the Hong Kong Ministerial.   As the Chairman, had said the time was long 
overdue to pass from identifying to  solving problems; from the technical to the political level; and 
from generalities to specifics on all areas of th e negotiations.  Members had to bring political 
commitment to the negotiations after the summer brea k and then perhaps they could all proceed in a 
more focused and effective way.   
377. The representative of Peru  deeply regretted that it had been  impossible to achieve substantial 
progress in the negotiations.  Members seemed to have  been negotiating exceptions rather than greater 
liberalization and clear disciplines in the internationa l trade in goods and services.  The state of crisis 
to which the Chairman had referred in the previous  week and which he had reiterated at the present 
meeting was not only reflected in the lack of a firs t approximation text but also – and this was more 
serious – in the maintenance of inflexible positi ons that had not contributed to progress in the 
negotiations.   
378. Peru reiterated its position in fa vour of a round that was ambitious on all fronts.  It did not 
want minimal results but was aiming for far-reaching reforms, greater transparency, predictability, 
clarity, compliance with the rules and market access – in other words the effective liberalization of 
international trade.  It was for this reason th at Peru regretted that Members were losing the 
opportunity and the sense of urgency to make substa ntial progress that would allow positive results to 
be achieved for all of them by the end of 2006.   
379. Despite the movements that had taken place in recent weeks differences on vital issues 
continued and Peru urged all Memb ers in particular those who s hould show leadership to redouble 
their efforts to obtain a good outcome in Hong Kong.   
380. Agriculture had a vital and decisive role in the Doha Round.  Peru considered it to be 
essential to achieving substantive reform of world ag ricultural trade that would eliminate distortions 
which had hindered and obs tructed development.  Peru was seek ing new and significant opportunities 
for access to all markets, including the total libera lization of the trade in tropical and alternative 
products, the elimination of quotas, tariff peaks and tariff escalations.  Similarly, sanitary and 
phytosanitary standards should not constitute a barri er to trade.  The outcome of the agricultural 
negotiations had to maintain a balance between the three pillars  and like other Members Peru 
considered the incremental approach  to be the best available mechan ism for working to implement the 
Doha mandate.  It called for a definite structure of  the formula and related flexibilities as key elements 
of the market access pillar.   
381. With regard to the NAMA negotiations, Peru regr etted that despite all the efforts devoted to 
the definition of the tariff structure Members still had no agreement on the type of the formula.  As TN/C/M/19 
Page 60  
 
 already stated Peru supported the Swiss formula an d the total binding of the tariff universe for all 
Members together with the application of the fo rmula that was adopted for new bound lines.   
382. He said that the negotiations on rules were also  of great interest for Peru.  Mindful of the 
different levels of progress in each of the areas of  this negotiation, Peru hoped that by December 
Members would have a basic text on anti-dumping  on which to negotiate.  As far as fisheries 
subsidies were concerned as a "Friend of Fish" Peru was committed to the formulation of new 
disciplines that would lead to the elimination of fish eries subsidies that distorted trade and production.  
Peru was pleased at the progress that had taken place and hoped to achieve in the next stages more 
specific levels of commitments.   
383. With regard to services, during the most recent  meeting of the Council for Services, Peru had 
submitted its revised offer which on account of its  high level of ambition had been commended by 
others.  It hoped that the rest of the Members w ould respond in the same way and ensure the same 
level of response to Peru's requests in particular in mode 4.   
384. Peru had been particularly active in the tr ade facilitation negotiations.  Proposal TN/TF/W/30 
stated the issues on which in its view Members shoul d begin to work on Articles V, VIII and X.  In 
this area cooperation, technical assistance and the defi nition of best practices played a very important 
role.  If Members set for themselves clear, concrete  and realistic objectives trade facilitation would be 
an area where all of them could be winners.   
385. With regard to the report on implementation issu es Peru had already stated the high priority 
which it attached to the area of intellectual property a nd in particular, to giving effect to the mandate 
to bring the TRIPS Agreement in conformity with the CBD.  Peru wished to see by the end of this 
round the adoption of commitments on disclosure of  origin, prior informed consent and access and 
distribution of benefits from resources associated or not with the traditional knowledge of indigenous 
peoples as a compulsory requirement in the patents system.  It had noted that a large number of 
Members considered that the time had come to take  effective action on this issue in the WTO and to 
try to rebalance and clarify the TRIPS Agreem ent which currently did not respond to many 
developing-country concerns as could be seen inter alia  by the growing number of cases of bio-piracy 
which considerably affected developing countries.  In this connection Peru had submitted a proposal 
aimed at amending Articles 27 and 29 of the TRIPS Ag reement so as to make them compatible with 
the CBD.   
386. The issues of S&D treatment and development were extremely important for Peru.  As 
Members had agreed they had to transform S&D into a more specific, effective and operative 
instrument which as a fundamental element of the WTO Agreements should have a horizontal 
character and be available on a practical basis in each  and every one of the areas of work of the WTO 
and should support the development efforts of a ll the developing countries including Peru.   
387. Peru noted that a series of proposals had been di scussed that sought to d eal with the particular 
situation of specific developing countries.  It was concerned that these proposals might imply a 
relaxation of the disciplines agreed or would go against the process of multilateral liberalization the 
fundamental objective of the Doha Round a nd consequently against its ambition.   
388. Peru was unable to support a commercial solution to the problem of the erosion of 
preferences, S&D treatment, the implicit or exp licit establishment of new subgroups or subcategories 
of countries nor any proposal which implied a free  round.  He emphasised that this Round called for 
commitments on the part of all and had to enab le all Members to benefit from its outcome.    TN/C/M/19 
 Page 61 
 
 
 389. In conclusion, he reiterated that the process of negotiations had to be transparent and inclusive 
if it were to achieve results that could be endorsed  by all the Members and reiterated the readiness of 
his delegation to continue to pa rticipate constructively in the whole process of negotiations.   
390. The representative of Colombia , said that Members had reached the end of July and had not 
achieved the objective that had been set with regard to the first approximation  This did not mean that 
they had to give up hope.  It meant that the decisi ons before them were very difficult to take since 
they affected particular interests.  What was impor tant in the final analysis was to obtain agreements 
directed towards achieving, on the basis of reciproc ity and mutual benefits a substantial reduction in 
customs duties and in the other barriers to trade and the elimination of discriminatory treatment in trade relations.  Whenever the time came to give eff ect to this principle contained in the preamble to 
the Marrakesh Agreement all Members placed thei r sensitivities on the table.  Such sensitivities 
always led to exclusions and protective measures in  the hope that it would be the others who would 
make the concessions.  To escape from this vicious ci rcle and transform it into a virtuous circle was 
the challenge before Members.  If economic or po litical circumstances needed to be more favourable 
for the achievement of a balanced trade agreement, Members had to make concessions and not let 
substance take second place.   
391. It was in agricultural trade that Members f ound the largest imbalances.  The Doha Round 
provided an opportunity to achieve a balanced level of liberalization and the conditions for 
competition in this sector.  Colombia agreed with the concerns expressed by the Chairman regarding 
lack of progress in the agricultural negotiations a year after having approved the working framework 
especially in the area of market access.  It was concerned by the proposals that had been submitted at 
the last minute in the consultations carried out by  the Agriculture Chairman in previous days which 
the other Members had not evaluated.  Some of these proposals lowered the desired level of ambition 
and had moved away from the mid-point agreed in Dalian.   
392. Colombia acknowledged the efforts that the Ag riculture Chairman had made in order to 
achieve by the present meeting a first approximati on on the basis of his proposed incremental 
approach.  However, without genuine political will expressed in a real commitment to the Doha 
mandate and the framework it would be impossible to achieve any outcome.  Once this commitment 
had been reconfirmed by all Members would they be able to achieve progress not only in the key elements of the three pillars but also in all the ot her elements of each pillar.  In the face of this 
situation Members ran the risk of lowering the leve l of ambition agreed at Doha for the agricultural 
negotiations which would be deplorable for the de veloping countries.  If this were to be the case 
Members would also be lowering the level of am bition in the other areas of negotiation to their 
detriment.   
393. It was Colombia's opinion that access for non- agricultural products also occupied a very 
important place in this Round.  If Members were to ach ieve balanced results th ey needed to pursue an 
approach which would satisfactorily combine ambiti on and flexibility.  A group of Latin American 
countries including Colombia had proposed a c onstructive approach which would allow the 
negotiations to advance.   
394. In the negotiations on services Members also s ought a balanced outcome.  The advantages for 
developed countries lay in their capacity to export capital.  Consequently, they sought to obtain concessions on the removal of barriers for the pr ovision of services through the commercial presence 
mode.  The advantages for developing countries lay in the provision of services through the mobility 
of natural persons and this was the area wh ere they sought to obtain concessions.   
395. Regarding development, she said Colombia be lieved that this should not be the round of 
exclusions from the obligations of the trade agreemen ts.  In the name of development, discriminatory 
treatments and the classifications of developing countries had been invoked.  As Colombia had it TN/C/M/19 
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 believed that Members had to view these negotia tions objectively and accept that they were all 
seeking greater liberalization which was what generated development.   
396. Colombia had participated constructively in the decision on S&D treatment for LDCs taking 
into account their institutional shortcomings in the application of multilateral commitments.  
However, it pointed out the danger that Members we re running into with the new proposal to amend 
Article XXIV of the GATT 1947 which the European  Communities and the ACP countries wished to 
achieve.  The call for S&D treatment  sought to reduce the standards of compliance with Article XXIV 
which were already in themselves very low.   
397. Lastly she said that Colombia wished to see a renewal of the commitment made in Doha and 
hoped that in September Members would take  the political decisions corresponding to the 
development Round which they had agreed to so th at it would be possible to advance in the second 
half of the year and achieve a final and ambitious outcome in Hong Kong.   
398. The representative of the Dominican Republic
 associated his delegation with the statements 
by Benin on behalf of the ACP Group and Indonesia on behalf of the G33.  His delegation agreed that 
Members had not succeeded in meeting the expectations  that they had set for the end of July.  They 
had little time left and all delegations, but especially  the main Members of this Organization, needed 
to make a major effort in order to make progress.   
399. With regard to the negotiations on agricu lture, the Dominican Republic welcomed the 
proposal submitted by the G20, in particular on the mark et access pillar.  In this connection, it found it 
difficult to express a view on the tariff formula propo sed since it did not know the percentages of the 
reduction that would be made.  For the Dominican Re public this information was vital since most of 
its tariff lines would remain in the second band and it could not accept deep cuts there.  As a member 
of the ACP Group, the Dominican Republic's preference was for the use of a Uruguay Round-type formula.  Escalation within the bands of the formula was not acceptable. 
400. He said that as a small and vulnerable econo my for the Dominican Republic the market 
access pillar in the agricultural negotiations was of the greatest importance.  It hoped to reach 
agreement on appropriate S&D treat ment with regard to tariff re ductions, Special Products and the 
Special Safeguard Mechanism.  Special Products s hould not be subject to tariff reductions nor to 
commitments regarding tariff quotas.  In addition,  the Dominican Republic hoped to see substantial 
reforms achieved in the pillars of dom estic support and export competition.   
401. With regard to the NAMA negotiations, his delegation recognized that some progress had 
been achieved and that interesting proposals had be en placed on the table.  However, after working 
for a year on a non-linear formula, as indicated in Annex B of the July 2004 Decision, his delegation 
was deeply concerned that to varying degr ees, the formulae on the table produced adverse 
consequences for small and vulne rable economies which, like the Dominican Republic, had their 
whole tariff universe bound at low levels.  Conse quently, his delegation urged that efforts should 
continue to be made to seek alternative ways of overcoming the current problems.  His delegation 
emphasized that the formula for tariff reduction that was agreed for NAMA should not affect the 
tariffs applied.  It was for this reason that it  viewed with sympathy the opinions of those who 
preferred a linear reduction formula.  He said at  the present stage of the negotiations his delegation 
believed it was important to seek common ground for ne gotiations in order to safeguard the interests 
of the small and vulnerable economies.   
402. On services he said that the Dominican Republic  as a small developing country had a vital 
interest in this area, which contributed approximate ly 57 per cent to its gross domestic product.  In 
this connection, it was working hard on its revised o ffer.  It also hoped that developed countries would 
present substantially improved offers, especially in m ode 4.  There had been considerable progress in  TN/C/M/19 
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 the negotiations on services, especially with rega rd to market access, where Members already had 
over 25 improved offers.  It was his delegation's opi nion that with a little effort by all Members and 
by continuing to follow the guidelines and proce dures for the negotiations on the trade in services 
established in 2001 and the provisions in the Doha Ministerial Declaration, these negotiations could 
be successful.  His delegation faile d to understand what some delegations meant when they said that 
for Hong Kong they needed to conclude modalities fo r services with a level of specificity similar to 
that in NAMA and agriculture.  In his delegation' s view, the modalities for the services negotiations 
had been defined long before the pr esentation of initial offers began, which was logical in any area of 
negotiations.   
403. The representative of Honduras  said that his delegation had re iterated on various occasions its 
commitment to work positively so as to agree on a ba lanced text to be transmitted to the Ministerial 
Conference in Hong Kong and thereby achieve success which all Members desired.  However, 
Honduras believed that there were some issues where Me mbers needed to find a solution if they were 
to achieve the development goals of most of the Members of the Organization.   
404. With regard to the negotiations in the ag ricultural sector, Honduras welcomed the latest 
proposal submitted by the G20, specifically on the ma rket access pillar.  However, since Honduras' 
entire tariff structure was made up of lines bound at low tariff levels, it believed that any approach on 
market access had to produce equita ble results and ensure, in particul ar, that the burden of the reform 
did not significantly harm those developing countries  which were the smallest and most vulnerable 
Members.   
405. Accordingly, in view of the distortions to which the agricultural sector was subject, Honduras 
believed that the tariff reduction formula proposed by the G20 was a good starting point.  The 
proposed formula needed to be adju sted so as to incorporate additiona l flexibilities to be applied in 
each band.  His delegation would have serious difficulties in agreeing to a formula which imposed cuts that went beyond what was possible for his country and the element of escalation within the bands was unacceptable to Honduras.  Furthermore, it  considered that any approach on market access 
had to fully respect the principle of proportionality as established in the July 2004 Decision.   
406. Similarly, in keeping with its position thr oughout these negotiations, Honduras considered 
that Special Products should not be subject to any kind of tariff reduction and that they should be designated on the basis of the requirements of  food security, rural development, and livelihood 
security of developing countries, in accordance with the provisions in the July 2004 Decision.  As the 
G33 had stated, Honduras was fully prepared to work on indicators for these products on the basis of 
the above-mentioned criteria.   
407. As Honduras had stated on several occasions the WTO's commitment to those developing 
countries that had a strong interest in obtaining real access for their tropical products in the international market had to be given effect in the future negotiating modalities for the agricultural 
sector.  In developing these modalities mentioned in paragraph 43 of the July 2004 Decision, efforts 
should be made to establish clear commitments by the developed countries on the elimination of the 
tariffs and non-tariff restrictions on tropical products of all kinds.   
408. With regard to the new Special Safeguard Mechanism, the G33 had submitted a detailed 
proposal.  Honduras hoped that it would receive positiv e consideration in the next stage after the 
summer break since the Group's objective was to ach ieve an effective mech anism to deal with 
significant increases in imports and in situations  arising from a fall in international prices.  
Accordingly, it should be activated on the basis of volume and price.   
409. Regarding the negotiations on NAMA, Honduras be lieved that the varying formulae that had 
been presented so far did not reflect the concerns relating to the economic and social development of TN/C/M/19 
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 small and vulnerable economies such as itself.  It  had full binding of its tariffs, with low average 
bound levels and very low aver age applied levels and had unde rtaken efforts at autonomous 
liberalization.  The need to diversify domestic pr oduction and integrate its economy into international 
trade had led Honduras to express its concern that Members should continue exploring alternatives 
with a view to achieving minimum reductions in  the bound tariffs and no reduction in the applied 
tariffs for such economies.  Hondur as believed that this should be agreed without prejudice to the 
flexibilities set out in paragraph 8 of Annex B.  Two elements which Honduras also considered 
important were the sectoral approach and NTBs.  The sectoral approach was a useful tool for those Members who wished to participate voluntarily.  Ho wever, Honduras considered that this issue would 
need to be clarified with a view to defining wh ich formula Members were going to apply.  It also 
believed that NTBs should be elim inated at least for those products  which countries like itself had an 
interest in exporting.   
410. With regard to services, like the majority of  the Members, Honduras' view was that the 
current negotiating process should continue on the b asis of GATS, the Doha Ministerial Declaration 
and the guidelines for negotiations established in Anne x C of the July 2004 Decision.  It was essential 
to preserve the flexibility of the Agreement and pr event imbalances from arising.  Honduras would be 
concerned at any initiative that might erode such  flexibility and allowed Members to decide for 
themselves the pace at which they offered market ac cess and national treatment with regard to specific 
service activities and sectors.   
411. With regard to trade facilitation, Honduras we lcomed the very positive report that the 
Chairman of the Group had presented.  It considered  that the report reflected the work undertaken so 
far in that negotiating group.  The large number of proposals submitted reflected the interest of the 
Members in this subject.  The objectives of the nego tiating group's mandate had to be kept in mind as 
Members advanced in this process, especially regard ing the promotion of tec hnical assistance and the 
support for capacity building.  In this context, in Honduras' view, promotion meant development, 
increase or encouragement, by which means it hope d to see the achievement of such objectives.  
Honduras considered that Members had to continue their work so as to achie ve a balanced outcome 
that took into account the various elements of the mandate, in particular, S&D treatment for 
developing countries.   
412. Finally, Honduras associated itself with the st atement by Indonesia on behalf of the G33 and 
expressed its readiness to continue working constructiv ely in this process with a view to agreeing to 
negotiating modalities that reflected the spir it and letter of the Doha Mandate.   
413. The representative of Lesotho
 associated her delegation with statements by Egypt on behalf of 
the African Group, Bangladesh on behalf of the LD Cs and Benin on behalf of the ACP Group.   
414. She said the statement read on behalf of LDCs had stated that LDCs had hoped for significant 
developments in many areas of the negotiations.  Th is showed that LDCs were hoping to derive some 
benefits from the multilateral trading system.  The WTO had to heed to the words of an anonymous 
person who had said: "Never deprive anyone of hope, because it might be all that they have."  She 
assured Members that hope was the only thing that the LDCs had and the WTO should not deprive them of it. 
415. Her delegation had failed to unde rstand how LDCs could benef it from this Round which was 
supposed to be a development one if they could not  even enjoy flexibilities from their partners on the 
only five LDC Agreement- specific proposals on S&D.  The text that was being negotiated was totally 
different from the LDCs' original text because LD Cs were always ready to show flexibility but 
Members had still not agreed on anything.  TN/C/M/19 
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 416. She said the five LDC Agreement-specific propo sals were crucial for the survival of her 
people.  She said that the WTO membership enjo yed seeing that when one was poor, one remained 
poor no matter how much one tried to pull oneself by the boot straps.  The membership always made sure that the world met nobody halfway.  Her delegation had always lis tened to sympathetic 
statements addressed to LDCs and genuinely appreciat ed them but statements were not enough.  They 
could not put bread on the tables of poor people from LDCs.  She said that LDCs needed commitment 
from their partners that could be guaranteed.   
417. LDCs were not proud to be begging for mercy and to being treated differently from other 
Members.  LDCs  were looking forward to the day th at they could stand on their own and they needed 
support from the WTO to achieve that.  They expe cted the membership to respect mandates and 
instructions given by Ministers in Doha and th e commitments made in the July 2004 Decision.  
Finally,  her delegation was hoping for more flexib ility after the summer break so that the Hong Kong 
Ministerial Conference could be counted am ong a few success stories of the WTO.   
418. The representative of Guatemala
 said that at the present meeting Members could focus on the 
progress that had so far been made, but Guatemala c onsidered that they shou ld rather focus on the 
outcome that was required for the Ministerial Conference in December.   
419. Guatemala saw the need for substantial progress in all areas the negotiations as part of a 
single whole with the development dimension at its  core.  Guatemala could not imagine any outcome 
of the negotiations or any progress that was not di rected towards ensuring greater participation in 
world trade and achieving concrete results in the form of provisions on S&D treatment.  As a member 
of both the G20 and the Cairns Group he associated his delegation with the statements of Brazil and 
Australia.  He said that very little time remained after the summer break and there was much to be 
done if Members were to achieve a text at the Ministerial Conference.   
420. The subject of agriculture was complex and it was for this reason that Guatemala understood 
the limited progress achieved in view of what the Chairman had termed as the interests of vital 
importance for delegations.  It was extremely impor tant that the three pillars of the negotiations 
advanced simultaneously.  Accordingly, his dele gation emphasized that S&D treatment had to be 
included in all the subjects under negotiation.   
421. With respect to the market access pillar he urged Members to develop a tariff reduction 
formula which took account of the concerns of the small and vulnerable economies, including the 
needed flexibilities and Special products, and the ne w Special Safeguards Mech anism.  Guatemala  
wished to see food aid treated in a balanced mann er since it had political and social connotations.  
Guatemala recognized the need for disciplines to prevent commercial displacement and not 
compromise the humanitarian aspect.  He reiterated his delegation's full readiness to work constructively during the months which remain ed before the Ministerial Conference.   
422. On NAMA Guatemala considered the tariff reducti on formula to be the main element of these 
negotiations.  This had to be complemented by th e principle of less than full reciprocity and S&D 
treatment which were flexibilities that had been includ ed in Annex B, paragraphs 2 and 8 of the Doha 
Work Programme.  Guatemala had emphasized in th e most recent NAMA meetings its concern with 
the approach of the simple Swiss formula.  He said that no decision should be taken which failed to 
state clearly the coefficients that would be applied within the formula to ensure that it did not act to 
the detriment of national industries, especially tho se of small economies.  Guatemala believed that the 
formula had to take into account the various tari ff structures of Members.  Although Guatemala's 
participation in this process wa s constructive, it had to respond to national circumstances.  
Accordingly, Guatemala could not support a formula intended to modify the tariffs applied since that 
would also affect other regional e fforts that were being undertaken within the framework of a customs 
union to which its government was committed.   TN/C/M/19 
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 423. His delegation also requested the inclusion of  additional flexibilities for small economies such 
as Guatemala which it believed should go beyond the provisions of paragraph 8.  He reiterated 
Guatemala's position that sectoral initiatives had to be  on a voluntary basis.  His delegation regarded 
as positive the progress which had been made on the subject of unbound tariffs.   
424. He said it was of great importance for Guatemala to agree on the methodology for the 
conversion of non ad valorem  duties and simplify them in the sche dules of Members.  The elimination 
of NTBs on the exports of the developing countries was an essential objective to be achieved as an outcome of this development round.  Finally, Guatem ala considered that the level of ambition in these 
negotiations had to be balanced against the levels of access achieved in the agricultural negotiations.   
425. On services, the Chairman's report had provided Members with the opportunity to review 
progress of the negotiations.  An analysis of such  progress showed the importance Members attached 
to the basis of the negotiations contained in the provisions of the GATS, the Doha Ministerial Declaration, the Guidelines for Negotiations and th e July 2004 Decision.  Guatemala believed that 
these guidelines provided Members with a basic appr oach for preserving the flexibility of the GATS 
and maintaining a balance at the conclusion of the negotiations.   
426. However, during the evaluation of the negotia tions he had noted that opinion had been 
divided on the progress of the services negotiations.  Guatemala considered that greater efforts were 
required if substantial progress was to be made and if the negotiations were to achieve a high quality 
package which reflected the needs of  the Members and in particular those of developing countries.   
427. Guatemala believed that a tangible outcome of these negotiations should be to ensure greater 
participation by developing countries in world trad e in services.  With regard to the proposal for 
complementary negotiating approaches to the requ est-offer process, he repeated that Guatemala 
favoured the current approach and that any kind of  complementary approach should comply with the 
guidelines for negotiations and flexibilities contained in the GATS.  The negotiations on services had 
to achieve a balance in the level of commitme nts in market access as well as formulation of 
disciplines on domestic regulations and rules within the Agreement.   
428. On trade facilitation, Guatemala shared the view that the negotiations had so far proceeded in 
a satisfactory manner.  It recognized that the ne gotiations had shown the flexibility needed for the 
presentation of proposals and national experien ces which Guatemala regarded as positive since it 
enabled all the Members to participate in the process.   Guatemala had noted that there were currently 
enough proposals on the table.  It considered that  these should be directed towards seeking decisions 
which took into account the needs and priorities of technical assistance and capacity building for 
LDCs and  developing countries.  In this connection, it supported and regarded as positive the 
approach used in the document prepared by the WTO Secretariat – Compilation of Proposals– which 
was important to keep up to date on account of its  usefulness for the negotiating process.  Regarding 
the WTO technical assistance programme and its re lation with other international organizations, 
Guatemala emphasized that such measures should c ontinue and be reinforced in order to support 
developing countries during and after the negotiations.   
429. On the rules negotiations, Guatemala drew atte ntion to the mandate in the Negotiating Group 
in the Doha Ministerial Declaration.  The Doha mandate had assigned this Group the difficult task of 
clarifying and improving highly complex and detailed texts.  Guatemala considered that the rules 
contained in the existing Agreements reflected the ef forts of many years of negotiations and were the 
outcome of previous rounds.  However, it belie ved that the current disciplines prevented small 
economies from gaining access to mechanisms of de fence against unfair trading practices.  Guatemala 
noted with particular concern that an increasi ng number of Members had taken refuge in the 
ambiguity of the rules and transformed these mechanis ms of legitimate defence into means of placing 
barriers to free trade.  Panels and the Appella te Body had interpreted the provisions of the  TN/C/M/19 
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 Agreements, creating a body of law which had grow n and evolved.  Howeve r, these interpretations 
were of limited scope and revealed the urgent need  to clarify and improve the relevant provisions of 
the Agreements.  In this connection, Guatemala belie ved that the rules negotiations should be directed 
towards finding a balance between granting protectio n against unfair trading practices and avoiding 
the inappropriate use of existing mechanisms that might operate to the detriment of the exports of 
other Members.   
430. Guatemala was aware that the task before Members was complex but it was difficult for 
Members to imagine an agreement on these matters outside the framework of an overall outcome.  
Guatemala agreed with the Rules Chairman that it was difficult to fit such concepts as "first 
approximation" or "modalities" into the context of these negotiations.  On the other hand, effective 
negotiations that achieved concrete  results would be reflected in a negotiating text.  Guatemala was 
aware that given the particular dynamics of the Negotiating Group on Rules, Members had to wait for 
the right time to obtain this text and ensure its viab ility.  In Guatemala's view this right time was very 
close and it urged all Members to seize the opportunity.  It believed that from now until the Ministerial Conference all rules meetings should focus on that objective.   
431. With regard to the report of the Chairman of  the Council for TRIPS on the establishment of a 
multilateral system for the notification and regist ration of GIs for wines and spirits Guatemala 
reiterated its support for the esta blishment of a system which facilitated the protection of such 
indications but which also preserved the territoriality of intellectual property rights in such a way that 
the Members established in their legislation the most  suitable means of fulfilling their obligations in 
conformity with their own legal systems.  Acco rdingly, Guatemala had been a co-sponsor of the 
proposal submitted by Australia and other Members.   
432. He expressed his country's determination to ach ieve substantial progress in these negotiations 
and its commitment to work with others to be able  to transmit to the Ministers concrete progress for 
the benefit of all Members at the Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong. 
433. Lastly, Guatemala welcomed the recent approva l by the United States Congress of the FTA 
between Central America, the Dominican Republic and the United States.  Guatemala believed that 
the approval of that Agreement had strengthened th e objective and aspirations of this Organization. 
434. The representative of El Salvador
 said that the entire membership had acknowledged that 
agriculture was of critical importance to the ec onomies of developing countries.  These countries 
should be able to pursue agricultural policies that  were supportive of their development goals, poverty 
reduction strategies and food security.  On that basi s, and speaking from the perspective of a small 
and vulnerable economy, he reitera ted his delegation's expectation that the present Round should 
achieve a balance that included operationally  effective modalities for S&D treatment.   
435. With regard to the market access pillar, he underscored the importance of Special Products 
and the Special Safeguard Mechanism.  El Salv ador acknowledged the valuable input from the G33 
which should be taken into  consideration and analysed from Sept ember.  Regarding the designation of 
Special Products, El Salvador was of the view that  this should be done on the basis of the already 
established criteria.  Furthermore, it pointed out the need to ensure that the current de minimis  margin 
should be for developing countries.  It belie ved that these measures were necessary for the 
implementation of effective policies and strate gies for poverty reduction and food security, whose 
importance for developing countries had already been  recognized.  His delegation fully endorsed the 
statement by Indonesia on behalf of the G33.   
436. On NAMA, El Salvador recognized the importan ce that some Members attached to the level 
of ambition of these negotiations.  That ambition shoul d, in turn, be firmly balanced by concrete and 
effective measures to ensure flex ibility.  El Salvador believed that here, as in other areas of TN/C/M/19 
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 negotiation, it was essential that the flexibility affo rded by the provisions on S&D treatment and less 
than full reciprocity which were contained in the negotiating framework and we re consistent with the 
Doha principles, should not be watered down in th e course of the discussions or, worse subjected to 
conditions.  It hoped that they would give rise to  concrete action to promote development and the 
creation and maintenance of jobs in countries such  as El Salvador.  His delegation emphasized that 
these principles should be reflected. 
437. As a member of the group that instigated the mandate on small economies, El Salvador 
considered that the flexibilities afforded by the provisions of paragraph 8 of Annex B were the 
minimum necessary for these Members to realize thei r legitimate development aspirations.  Work was 
accordingly needed to build on those flexibilities further in order to respond adequately to the 
concerns of such Members.   
438. On services, El Salvador noted with satisfaction the increase in the number of offers both 
initial and revised that had been submitted in the previous months.  Regarding the figures in the 
Chairman's report on the status of offers El Salvador  agreed with the Chairman  that they provided no 
information on the quality of what was being offe red or on the economic importance of the sectors 
covered.  This could only be determined by each Me mber in accordance with its own interests.  As to 
the summary in Annex I of the report this did not reflect the importance of each and every sector and mode of supply for all Members.   
439. As for future work, El Salvador believed th at the negotiations on trade in services should 
continue to evolve in keeping with the objective set in the Doha Ministerial Declaration, namely 
promoting the economic growth of all trading partne rs and the development of developing countries.  
Further, the liberalization process should respect na tional policy objectives, the level of development 
and the size of the economy of each Member as had been agreed in the Guid elines and Procedures for 
the Negotiations of Trade in Services adopted by  the Council for Trade in Services in 2001.   
440. Regarding improving the request-offer process and additional approaches to measure and 
encourage progress in these negotiations, El Salvador reiterated that initiatives in this area should on 
no account be to the detriment of the flexibility of  scheduling of commitments as provided for in the 
GATS and the Guidelines and Procedures for the negotiations.   
441. Domestic regulation was a matter to which El Salvador attached importance because 
disciplines on domestic regulation could contribute to  lowering the various barriers that its service 
providers currently faced and could therefore a fford real advantages in market access in sectors 
opened.  Lastly, any such discipline should incorporate S&D treatment needed by developing 
countries, and respect the right of every Member to regulate service supply in its territory and 
establish new regulations in order to achieve its legitimate national policy objectives.   
442. El Salvador attached great importance to trad e facilitation because it was a trading instrument 
that would help to make the economies of Members more competitive.  El Salvador accordingly noted 
with great satisfaction the progress made so far.  Regarding future work, he said it would be very 
important to allow time to analyse the many proposal s that had been tabled so that Members were in a 
position to determine, inter-alia , the costs, needs, priorities and t echnical assistance that each of the 
proposals involved.  It was important that developi ng countries should make the most of the benefits 
that would derive from agreements on trade facilitation and minimize any costs involve d.  To this end, 
as the negotiating modalities agreed last July had indicated, technical assistance and capacity building 
for developing countries would be essential.  El Salvador emphasized the importance of paying due 
attention to defining measures for S&D tr eatment for developing countries.   
443. With respect to cross-cutting issues he said that  first and most releva nt was the development 
dimension which was at the heart of the Round.  In  El Salvador's view, this was a key element in  TN/C/M/19 
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 securing the commitment of the entire membership to the Doha Round.  He emphasized that El 
Salvador attached priority to defining measur es for S&D treatment and to the Work Programme on 
Small Economies which was under the General Council.   Secondly, inclusiveness and transparency 
were unconditional prerequisites as Members progressed in the negotiations.  El Salvador urged the 
Chairman's successor to move the negotiating pro cess forward with periodic consultation sessions 
open to all Members in addition to the formal and informal negotiating sessions on each negotiating 
topic.  Thirdly, he pledged El Salvador's total commitment to the tasks Members would be taking up 
after the summer break with a view to attaining bala nced results in Hong Kong that would fulfil their 
legitimate aspirations in terms of the de velopment they sought and needed.   
444. He said that as had already been mentioned by United States, the FTA between Central 
America, the Dominican Republic and the United States had been ratified.  He expressed El 
Salvador's satisfaction with an agreement that w as a clear example of its commitment to balanced 
trade liberalization with a development focus.   
445. The representative of Cuba  said that the 2001 Doha Ministerial Declaration had been adopted 
in the context of a delicate balance of interests in  which the main agreement had been that the Round 
would have development as its main theme in order to give developing countries greater opportunities 
for trade.  Further, the agricultural sector which was the most distorted as a result of trade policies 
applied by developed countries woul d be subject to substantial reform.  Unfortunately, there had been 
no progress that indicated that the Doha objectives we re likely to be reached.  The issues relating to 
development had made little or no progress.  On the c ontrary, varying interpreta tions of  the text had 
been put forward leading to confusion and differen ces of opinion which in no way helped to achieve a 
consensus and balance in the process.  The prev ious day's meeting of the General Council had 
indicated the critical state of development issues and the need to achieve effective progress in order to 
satisfy the aspirations of all Members.   
446. His delegation supported the statements by  the G20, the G33 and the ACP Group on 
agriculture.  He agreed with the African Group th at developed countries held  a considerable number 
of contradictory positions and therefore needed to make major effort and show greater flexibility in 
order to achieve the ambitious outcome they sough t in all areas.  He said there was no doubt that 
Members faced a crisis in the negotiations which had prevented them from fulfilling the hopes they 
had for July.  Consequently it would be necessary to  work hard with a clear political will to achieve 
concrete results in a short time if Members wi shed to obtain an agreement on modalities at Hong 
Kong.   
447. The Doha Work Programme and Annex A of the July Package were the foundations for 
discussions by Members.  His delegation reiterate d the importance of achieving results on all the 
issues contained in the Annex especially on S&D treatmen t in all the pillars and paragraph 50.  In this 
connection it reiterated the need to strengthen th e disciplines of Article 12.1 of the Agreement on 
Agriculture so as to prevent its provisions from bei ng evaded or applied in a discriminatory manner to 
underdeveloped countries.   
448. He said the G20 had made an effective c ontribution to the agricultural negotiations by 
submitting proposals on all the pillars of the negotia tions.  These proposals had laid the foundation for 
work after the summer break.   
449. He emphasized the importance for Cuba of Special Products and the Special Safeguard 
Mechanism on which the G33 had submitted propo sals.  Cuba supported the establishment of 
mechanisms that provided a satisfactory response to  the concerns of countries that strongly depended 
on trade preferences.  It also hoped to see a fair  and rapid solution to the issue of cotton which 
affected 32 African countries.   TN/C/M/19 
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 450. On NAMA he said it was clear that there were pr iority issues that need ed to be solved for 
negotiations to progress.  These were the form ula, unbound tariffs and the methodology for the 
conversion of non-ad valorem duties.  It was on these issues that most work had been done and had been the subject of the recent consultations by th e Chairman with some Members.  However, his 
delegation agreed with other delegations that th e mandate for the NAMA negotiations covered other 
issues equally important for a considerable number  of Members and where they hoped to see positive 
and balanced results.  These issues included the eros ion of preferences, concerns of countries covered 
by paragraph 6 of Annex B and of recently acceded  countries which already had difficulties in their 
economies as a result of the commitments undertaken.  On these issues there was still no consensus.   
451. The elimination of NTBs which had shown an alarming increase in recent years was one of 
the hopes which many countries had in these negotia tions.  Although progress had been made in the 
identification and notification of such barriers by so me Members work remained.  He pointed out that 
the elimination of NTBs had the same priority a nd commitment in the mandate as the reduction of 
tariffs.  It would be impossible to achieve the balance hoped for in these negotiations and 
consequently be difficult to reach agreement on the ot her aspects of the negotiations if the interests of 
all Members were not met.   
452. On trade facilitation he said that his delegati on regarded the simplification and harmonization 
of customs procedures and the reduction of costs and time in the clearance of goods as a desirable 
objective for all Members.  However, these obj ectives had to be achieved without financial 
implications for developing countries most of wh om had serious economic difficulties.  He said 
consequently all proposals submitted which involved costs should be accompanied by a 
corresponding commitment on the part of develope d countries to provide technical and financial 
assistance or a solution.   
453. The future work of the Group would need to fo cus on an examination of the proposals which 
conformed to the mandate and which would produce genuine benefits for trade.  He said Members 
should not try to push proposals that pursued to adopt national experiences or  the generalization of 
practices when these were not better or more eff ective than others which were applied.  The 
procedures or measures to be agreed in addition to  being clear, simple and transparent had to be 
applied equitably and without discrimination.   
454. He said his delegation could not accept an acceler ated process in this area which would not 
allow the contents of all proposals submitted to be properly considered.  This issue had to have its 
own dynamic and linkage with other disciplines.  The conclusion of the work had to be subject to the 
achievement of positive results arising from the nego tiations as a whole and not the demands of time.  
More time was necessary for developing countries to  submit proposals that reflected all their possible 
interests in these negotiations.  He said that proposals that involved unnecessary and costly 
commitments and which would not have real benefits  for trade i.e. not improve customs procedures 
and work in other similar areas and streamline ope rations would not contribute to the outcome hoped 
for.  One of Cuba's main interests in these negotia tions was strengthening of Article V in particular 
the principle of non-discrimination.   
455. He said his delegation recognized the essentia l link between negotiations on services and 
other important areas of the Doha Agenda such as agriculture, S&D treatment and NAMA.  If there 
was no progress in those areas it would be difficult to  advance in services.  It considered that the 
negotiations on services were proceeding at a good p ace and were not lagging behind other areas of 
the overall negotiations such as agriculture and NAM A.  His delegation had noted the increase in the 
number of initial offers submitted in recent months  by developing countries including Cuba.  It 
reiterated that most of the offers submitted so fa r by the developed countries did not provide market 
access in the sectors and modes of supply of interest  to developing countries.   Accordingly, it called 
on developed countries to comply with the mandate c ontained in Annex C of the July 2004 Decision.   TN/C/M/19 
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 His delegation rejected the introduction of new approaches or modalities of negotiation that could 
have negative consequences on the process and em phasized that conformity with the mandate 
contained in Annex C and the 2001 negotiating gui delines including the request-offer approach was 
the only legitimate and acceptable way of conducting these negotiations.   
456. He said that the current international economic  climate required a genuine commitment to 
multilateralism on the part of Members through the e limination of trade barriers and the improvement 
of market access for the goods and services of interest to developing countries which together with the 
flexibilities necessary for the implementation of the commitments resulting from these negotiations, 
was the only way of ensuring that the Doha Work Programme responded to the needs of the majority 
of Members.   
457. The representative of Trinidad and Tobago  associated his delegation with the statements by 
Benin on behalf of the ACP and Indonesia on behalf of the G33.  He noted with disappointment the 
general lack of progress in many areas of the nego tiations and the very slow pace in others.  He 
understood fully the challenges facing delegations in their quest for the most beneficial outcomes for 
their countries and that to have arrived at this poi nt in the negotiations, there had been compromises 
on all sides.  In all areas of the negotiations a si gnificant number of proposals and comments had been 
submitted.  Within that body of work there we re areas in which there was some measure of 
convergence.  In others, as indicated in the Chairm en’s reports, there appeared to be little hope for 
agreement by the time of the Ministerial Meeti ng in Hong Kong without further compromise and 
flexibility.  In addition, there continued to be a ne ed for greater transparency  and inclusiveness in the 
process.  He added that it was necessary for all de legations to return to the negotiating table in 
September with renewed and intensif ied efforts to achieve an outcome that was workable for all.   
458. His delegation still hoped for results that would take into account the need for S&D treatment 
for developing countries in keeping with the DDA.  Members had an opportunity to devise specialized 
and practical mechanisms for enhancing the inte rnational competitiveness of developing countries 
with the objective of fostering their meaningful pa rticipation in the multilateral trading system.  One 
of the problems facing many developing countries was the fact that they had difficulty honouring even 
their present commitments because th ey were expensive to implement in terms of financial and 
human resources and, in most cases, required extens ive institutional, regulator y and legal reforms.  
Despite this fact, developing countries were willing and continued to play their part in the global 
system but the appropriate transitional periods, tec hnical assistance and capacity building mechanisms 
had to be provided.   
459. In the area of market access, Members needed to determine the right formula that would 
guarantee that developing countries would still able to protect their vulnerable sectors and provide 
breathing space to help them adjust to the incr eased competition from the influx of imports should 
tariffs be lowered even further.  His delegation urged Members to give due consideration to the 
proposal submitted by some CARICOM memb er countries in the NAMA Group.   
460.  On trade facilitation, his delegation supported the speeding up of the flow of goods and 
services and improvement in clearance and related procedures.  It noted the proposal made for a 
coordinating mechanism for publishing the relevant trad e rules and for the management of the work of 
donor agencies which would provide technical assistance to developing countries.   
461. With respect to agriculture, his delegation no ted the proposals submitted including that of the 
G20 on all three pillars as a possible basis for furthe r work.  However, it also noted that developing 
countries had not been granted full access to the market s of developed countries.  In particular, a 
regime of various phytosanitary regulations and gene rous subsidies had nullified their efforts to gain 
access and to compete.   TN/C/M/19 
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 462. In the area of services, he said that many, though not a sufficient number of countries had 
tabled initial offers.  However, his delegation w as disappointed with the overall progress of these 
negotiations.   
463.  As Members looked to Hong Kong, it was appare nt that unless there was a radical change in 
positions the negotiations might not be as fruitful as  desired.  The failure to adequately address the 
development issues would be a major contributing factor.   
464.  Before Hong Kong Members would need to devise an extensive and more inclusive 
consultation process that ensured the opportunity for pa rticipation by all delegations.  He said that to 
achieve success at the Hong Kong Meeting Members had to adopt a more realistic approach to 
levelling the playing field.   
465. The representative of Pakistan
 said that the interventions that had been made by various 
delegations had showed that while they were disappointed with the progress made so far they were all 
committed and hopeful of achieving meaningful results at Hong Kong.   
466. On agriculture, he associated his delegation with the statement by Brazil on behalf of G20.  
His delegation agreed with the Agriculture Chairman that in order to move forward on the key issues, 
clear indications were needed from major players.  For example, on domestic support there were three 
key issues; firstly where the three largest users of Amber Box should fall in the tiered formula; 
secondly, disciplines for the Blue Box and finally, clarifying criteria for Green Box.  On market access, the G20 had already worked out a compromise and the best way to move forward was to take 
the G20 proposal as the basis for further work.  If so me Members tried to stretch it in any direction it 
would be difficult to achieve consensus by Hong  Kong.  He urged Members not to make progress 
difficult.  If they were sincere in reaching a solu tion in Hong Kong the G2 0 proposal on market access 
as a compromise solution was well placed.   
467. In order to move the work forward and be well prepared for the next phase Pakistan was 
hosting a G20 Ministerial meeting on 9-10 September.   It would be inviting representatives of LDCs, 
African countries, CARICOM and ACP countries to have a dialogue on their concerns.  Pakistan 
hoped that other Members would respond and fully engage in the fall.   
468. Pakistan agreed with China and other delega tions who had called for renewed commitment of 
all concerned to finding an early solution or early ha rvest for the cotton issue.  Pakistan also agreed 
with the Agriculture Chair's observa tion that the longer it took to pr ovide answers to such concerns, 
the more difficult it would be to envisage reaching agreement at Hong Kong.   
469. Progress in NAMA was very closely linked with that  in agriculture.  In order to move the 
process forward Pakistan had put forward a bol d and ambitious proposal around which consensus 
could be reached.  This proposal met the requirement  of various interests as it was simple, transparent 
and easy to comprehend.  Members could clearly be aware of the consequences of their commitments. The proposal would make everyone contribute and a ll would gain through additional market access.  
His delegation hoped that a consensus could be built around this proposal in the fall.   
470. On services, Pakistan's initial offer had b een welcomed as one of most liberal from 
developing countries.  From the feedback and a dditional requests it had received it was now working 
on final offers.   
471. On rules, Pakistan was encour aged by the serious engagement and hoped that the negotiations 
would result in improved rules to prevent abuses of anti-dumping procedures.  On development, 
Pakistan hoped that a number of proposals relating to interests of developing countries would receive  TN/C/M/19 
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 due attention and engagement by major players.  Pa kistan was generally satisfied with the work on 
trade facilitation and hoped that all aspects of this issue could make parallel progress.   
472. The representative of the Republic of Moldova  said she was also speaking on behalf of  
Armenia , Georgia  and the Kyrgyz Republic , four small low-income economies in transition, recently 
acceded to the WTO said that as a whole, they agreed with the evaluations on the situation in all areas 
of negotiations.  The main message at the present m eeting was that the status of negotiations did not 
correspond to Members' common expectations.  It was imperative that after the summer break the 
pace of negotiations in all areas was accelerated w ith a view to reaching balanced and mutually 
acceptable outcomes.  Like many delegations, the gr oup hoped to see concrete  and positive elements 
in terms of development-oriented results as manda ted by the Doha Ministerial Declaration.   
473. She drew the attention of Members to the con cerns of the four countries which were small 
low-income countries in transition.  These were ex pressed in their formal proposals submitted to the 
Committee on Agriculture and the Negotiating Group on Market Access in documents 
TN/AG/GEN/10 and Corr.l, and TN/MA/W/56/Rev. 1.   
474. She said that the four countries had formed  a like-minded group of small low-income 
countries in transition.  Although their level of de velopment was quite low, the WTO Agreements and 
the Doha Ministerial Declaration did not stipul ate any specific flexibilities for these countries.  
Therefore, they could not avail themselves of flex ibilities they needed in comparison with developing 
countries and LDCs.   
475. The two documents mentioned a bove had taken as a basis the provisions of paragraph 38 of 
the Doha Declaration as well as paragraph 1.d an d other relevant parts of the 2004 July Decision 
which had underlined the difficulties faced by sma ll low-income economies in transition in their 
efforts to implement economic and trade policy reforms.   
476. They underscored that paragraph 47 of Annex A and paragraph 11 of Annex B of the July 
2004 Decision had called for special provisions for tari ff reductions in order to take into account the 
extensive market access commitments undertaken  as a part of accession of the newly acceded 
Members and to address their particular concerns.  They stressed that objective economic indicators 
showed that the level of development of their economies was comparable to low-income developing 
countries and LDCs.  For example, the Gross Nati onal Income (GNI) per capita in 2003 of both the 
Kyrgyz Republic at US$ 382 and the Republic of Moldova at US$ 542 were classified as one of 61 
low-income economies whose GNI pe r-capita was less than US$ 765.  Armenia, the Kyrgyz Republic 
and the Republic of Moldova were landlocked and f aced additional difficulties in economy and trade.  
Furthermore, the participation of the group of countries in world trade was quite insignificant.  
According to the available trade statistics, their share in total world exports was between 0.004 per 
cent and  0.01 per cent.  All these facts underlin ed that economic growth and stability of their 
countries were extremely vulnerable to changes in trading conditions like in other developing 
countries and LDCs.   
477. The group of countries had undertaken extremely hi gh level of liberalization commitments in 
goods and services, unprecedented in the history of GA TT/WTO.  For example, agricultural tariffs of 
their countries were bound at very low levels, about  3.4 times lower compared to the Uruguay Round 
average final bound tariffs of developing country Me mbers and more than six times compared to the 
LDCs.  They therefore considered that their count ries, whose tariffs were bound at such low rates, 
should remain exempt from any kind of further redu ctions in the medium term in view of the high 
tariff levels of other Members as well as internationa l market distortions caused by agricultural export 
subsidies and domestic support measures by developed country Members.   TN/C/M/19 
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 478. Another subject that deserved special atten tion was the special safeguards (SSGs).  Low-
income economies in transition had neither the right  to invoke the SSG nor were they indicated as 
beneficiaries of a future Special Safeguard M echanism.  The new Special Safeguard Mechanism 
should be used to counter surges in imports partic ularly in Special Products on which the low income 
producers depended.   
479. With respect to the export subsidies, she recalle d that Armenia, Georgia, the Kyrgyz Republic 
and the Republic of Moldova had bound their use at zero.  Moreover, they were not allowed to enjoy 
the flexibility provided to developing countries under Ar ticle 9.4 of the Agreement on Agriculture.   
480. Regarding Special Products, it was their view  that the new Special Safeguard Mechanism 
should be applied to all such products.  In the ar ea of domestic support, their countries had had to set 
their de minimis  levels at five per cent instead of ten pe r cent for developing countries.  Furthermore, 
their countries had not been granted access to flexibilities provided to developing countries under 
Article 6.2 of the Agreement on Agriculture, i.e. ex clusion of investment subsidies generally available 
to agriculture and input subsidies generally ava ilable to low- income and resource-poor producers 
from the Aggregate Measurement of Support (AMS) calcu lation.  They emphasized in this regard that 
even small volumes of subsidized imports affect ed their national producers made them uncompetitive 
and as a result pulled their firms out of business.   
481. With respect to non-agricultural products, thei r tariff bindings were already 100 per cent and 
expressed only in ad valorem  duties. Furthermore, these tariffs were bound at very low levels about 
4.4 times lower, as compared to the Uruguay Round average final bound tariffs of developing country Members and about seven times lower compared to  LDCs.  Accordingly, the group of countries 
requested Members to agree that the small low-in come economies in transition which were recently 
acceded to the WTO, should be granted the same fl exibilities with regard to non-agricultural market 
access as had already been agreed for the LDCs and other vulnerable devel oping countries.  Such 
flexibilities were indeed required to support the reform  efforts and sustain trade liberalization by small 
low-income economies in transition.   
482. Turning to services, they stressed the unprecedentedly high, comprehensive and 
unreciprocated level of their liberalization in all services sectors.  They had in the process of accession to the WTO undertaken commercially meaningful and wide commitments in about 128 services sub-
sectors.  Those were much higher than the commit ments of developed countries, about 3.1 times more 
than those of developing country Members and a bout 5.3 times more than in the LDCs.  They hoped 
that other WTO Members would follow their and other recently acceded Menbers' example with 
regard to the level of commitments in the WTO which would contribute to the improvement of access 
of their goods to other Members' markets.   
483. They were concerned that the results of th e Doha Work Programme could deepen existing 
inequalities in the tariff structure of Members, co mmitments in GATS sectors and other imbalances.  
Therefore, as had been stated in paragraph 49 of  the Doha Ministerial Declaration, the negotiations 
and the negotiating modalities as an integral part thereof, should be conducted with a view to ensuring 
benefits to all participants and to achieving an ov erall balance in the outcome of the negotiations.   
484. She thanked all delegations that had reacted positively to their proposals on agriculture and 
NAMA.  It was their expectation that their concer ns as expressed in those documents would be fully 
reflected in any first-approximations  text and in the outcomes of the Sixth Ministerial Conference.  In 
this context, she reiterated that they were ready to engage constructively in  the elaboration of the 
greater flexibility for the low-income countries in tr ansition in the draft modalities for both agriculture 
and NAMA but needed a constructive response from their partners too.    TN/C/M/19 
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 485. In concluding, she said they wanted to establish fair and mutually benefi cial relations between 
all WTO Members on the basis of correct, proportiona te and balanced rules and commitments in the 
Organization.  Members had to find working modalities for the small low-income countries in transition so that they would really enjoy the bene fits of WTO membership.  They requested the TNC 
and the General Council to give clear guidance to th e relevant negotiating bodies in this respect.   
486. The representative of Paraguay
 said that that Members were not in a position celebrate the 
same success as they had done the previous July at the present meeting.  The commitment of the 
Chairs and delegations was positive and left his de legation with a positive feeling of expectation for 
December.   
487. On agriculture, he hoped that Hong Kong would place the final seal on the commitment to 
eliminate export subsidies and open the way to si gnificant market access for Paraguay's products and 
ensure a sizeable reduction in domestic support and similar trade-distorting instruments.  Paraguay 
would continue to work within the G20 to suppor t the agriculture negotiations.  He expressed hope 
that the cotton programme would bear fruit and br ing substantial relief to countries such as Paraguay 
where cotton was a mainstay of the economy and the well-being of the rural population.   
488. It was very much in Paraguay's interest as a land-locked developing country that there should 
be progress in the Work Programme for Small Eco nomies.  Paraguay would continue working to 
submit its specific proposals in the hope that delegati ons that still had reservations would realize that 
the mandate in paragraph 35 of the Doha Declara tion was warranted and coherent.  Some countries, 
while not LDCs, were in a situation which required concrete measures if they were to be integrated in 
world trade.   
489. Paraguay welcomed the progress made in the Negotiating Group on Trade Facilitation, to 
which it had contributed important wo rking papers.  It would continue working with resolve so that by 
Hong Kong Members would be in a position to adopt useful decisions to speed up and unblock trade, 
transit transport, port and customs formalities and other important areas of trade facilitation.   
490. Paraguay also had an interest in the other ar eas of the negotiations including NAMA, services 
and rules.  In all of them, it would continue to c ooperate to the best of its ability.  Paraguay would also 
pursue its efforts towards providing LDCs with a pa ckage of measures that would help them become 
better integrated in the global economy.   
491. The representative of Nepal  agreed with the Chairman that  there had been progress in terms 
of sharpening the discussions on all major issues.  However, he was disappointed by the lack of substantive progress which was required if Member s were to make the Hong Kong Ministerial a 
success.  Members needed to redouble their effo rts to seek common ground in the negotiations 
without sacrificing ambitions.  He associated his delegation with the statement by Bangladesh on 
behalf of the LDC Group.   
492. There were some genuine concerns regarding the pace of progress and his delegation was also 
worried about them.  A lot of groundwork had been  completed and Members now needed to move to 
the structure.  In so doing, his delegation looked for ambition and flexibility from all delegations.  His 
delegation had pinned high hopes on the success of  the conclusion of the Doha Round which had 
development at its core.  As an LDC which had to deal with innumerable structural inadequacies to 
compete in this fiercely globalized world, it was important that the development content was not 
diluted in the intricacies of negotiations and that  there were clear and substantial economic gains 
resulting from the negotiations to all including the LDCs, which were the most vulnerable.  This 
would be the true barometer of success.  Various delegations had spoken about  the development gains 
to be made from the Doha Round.  His delega tion appreciated the sentiments and he said it was 
precisely with the development gains in mind that Ne pal had consistently uphe ld its firm commitment TN/C/M/19 
Page 76  
 
 to the integration into the world economy despite  burdensome adjustment costs and limited capacity.  
The development gains had indeed the potential of lifting masses out of poverty.  Studies had consistently shown that an ambiti ous Doha agenda, if faithfully and diligently pursued, had a real and 
palpable potential to deliver such promises.  It woul d be an abject failure on the part of Members if 
with this knowledge they were not able to come  out with the necessary outcomes.  His delegation 
wished to see that this perspective guided Me mbers as a beacon to all the negotiations as they 
prepared for the Hong Kong Ministerial.   
493. His delegation therefore hoped that the commi tment to the development content and its 
benchmarks would guide Members' de liberations after the summer break.  He stressed that in order to 
achieve the ambitious goals all Memb ers had to make extra effort to ensure that the statements of 
commitment and determination to lend support to LDCs  were translated into actual flexibilities in the 
negotiating positions.  There should be no disconn ect between the two in the negotiations. The 
autumn negotiations would be a crucial test in this regard.   
494. Secondly, while his delegation knew that the ma jor players took the leadership role in the 
negotiations, it wished to see that the process remain ed inclusive.  An inclusive process would not 
only make the negotiations universal in character but  would also help improve the content to ensure 
equity as well as ownership, which would make the gl obal trading system more stable, meaningful to 
all and sustainable in the long run.   
495. Thirdly, duty free and quota free access for LDCs with flexible rules of origin was key to the 
meaningful integration of the LDCs to the multila teral trading system.  This constituted the core 
content of the development dimension of the D oha Round for Nepal.  LDCs, because of their 
structural constraints and debilitating poverty had en ormous obstacles to surmount even to engage in 
productive development processes with only a limited capacity to export.  With their dependence on 
one or two products, being far away from market ce ntres and with the highly sophisticated market 
structures today, LDCs were simply unable to enter the global market, no matter how liberal their trade system and internal economic structures were.  Therefore this was the minimum that was 
required to spur the growth of trade in these c ountries.  Limited supply capability and NTBs still had 
to be dealt with in order to ensure effective mark et access for LDC products.  Similarly, liberalization 
of mode 4 including for the non-professionals he ld great promise for the sending and receiving 
countries. Members had to have greater ambitions in this sector.  A clear commitment to implement 
the modalities for LDCs was Nepal's priority.  Negotia tions on trade facilitation had to ensure that it 
enhanced the trade of the LDCs through improveme nts in their trading capacity and infrastructure 
development.   
496. Fourthly, technical assistance and capacity buildi ng for LDCs was the sure way to integrate 
them into the global trading system.  His delegation appreciated the assistance provided so far and there was need to enhance the resource flow and to  extend the scope of such assistance so that these 
would be of help to LDCs to truly improve thei r productive as well as export capabilities.  He said the 
Doha Round provided a real opportunity to translate one of the fundamental objectives of 
international trade into reality, namely, to cont ribute to reduction of poverty by meaningfully 
integrating the poorer countries into  multilateral trading system.   
497. In conclusion he expressed his delegation's gra titude to the Chairman for his personal support 
during Nepal's accession process.   
498. The representative of Costa Rica
 said that his delegation was disappointed that Members had 
arrived at the end of July without a first approxi mation of the outcome which they hoped to obtain in 
Hong Kong.  Members had worked intensively in Gene va.  Officials and Ministers had sought to find 
points of contact, but it had not been possible to achie ve a result.  Like students who did not pass their 
exams before the summer holidays and had to work  in order to succeed later on, Members were  TN/C/M/19 
 Page 77 
 
 
 obliged to seek success in the following stage.  The time would be short and therefore their efforts and 
commitments needed to be clear.   
499. However, they were not starting from zero.  As  a starting point, as the Agriculture Chairman 
had pointed out, they still had the July 2004 Decision.   The discussions of the previous few weeks had 
also helped to bring about better understanding of th e different positions.  However, Members had yet 
to enter into negotiations that would enable  them effect exchanges on all issues.   
500. Agriculture was the gateway to progress in all th e sectors.  Consequently, Members with high 
levels of protection had to undertake to engage ser iously in negotiations from September onwards.  
Costa Rica would be making every effort in this process in order to achieve modalities in Hong Kong.  
If that was to be done, as had been  stated by Australia on behalf of the Cairns Group, there would 
have to be substantial progress in market access and Members were still far from achieving that.  For 
Costa Rica the level of ambition on market access ha d to be clearly defined before the flexibilities.  
This level of ambition would become clear when Me mbers defined the details of the formula and of 
the commitment on maximum liberalizat ion for tropical products.  Both were elements of the mandate 
that defined the level of ambition.   
501. Real and substantial reductions  would be required in trade- distorting domestic support and 
progress in the elimination of export subsidies.   
502. There had been considerable progress in  NAMA during recent weeks and Costa Rica 
welcomed the considerable support expressed for th e Swiss formula as a method of achieving tariff 
reduction.  One coefficient for the developed co untries and another for the developing countries 
would give the flexibility that developing countries required.  Costa Rica considered the concept of a 
"non-linear mark-up" as a way of achieving the binding of the tariffs of all countries.   
503. Market access was the greatest contribution that  the Round could make to the growth of the 
developing countries.  Costa Rica had supported th e launching of the Round on the basis of its 
ambitious mandates and therefore it could not imagine that trade liberalization for the benefit of all 
would be limited in order to leave trade discrimina tion for the benefit of some unchanged.  The Round 
was a way of reducing distortions and could not be a means of making them permanent.  He said that 
Costa Rica would support the efforts directed to solving the problems that liberalization might cause 
for countries highly dependent on preferences by m eans of the adjustment programmes that they 
might require.   
504. The negotiations on rules now had to move to details.  Costa Rica trusted that the period 
between September and the Ministerial Conferen ce in Hong Kong in December would enable 
considerable progress to be made that would guarantee substantial results.   
505. Obviously, all Members had defensive interests,  but it would not be through the defence of 
individual interests that Members would be able to  bring their positions closer.  It would be the 
satisfaction that Members obtained with regard to th eir offensive objectives, in the areas were they all 
had high levels of ambition, which would ensure , within the single whole, that the Round was a 
success because all Members obtained the greatest benefits from it.   
506. The representative of Tanzania  associated his delegation with statements by Bangladesh for 
the LDC Group, Egypt for the African Group, Benin for the ACP Group, Brazil for the G20 and Indonesia for the G33.   
507. It was unfortunate that despite of the very hard  work that Members had invested, they had not 
been able to advance the negotiations to the stag e they had hoped for by July.  This was very 
disappointing.  His delegation hoped that the ne w phase of the negotiations starting in September TN/C/M/19 
Page 78  
 
 would offer better prospects.  It would take a lo t more work and commitment at both technical and 
political levels in order to realize the promise of the DDA.   
508. Many of Tanzania's concerns and interests as an  LDC, but also a participant in several of the 
developing country groupings, had been expressed in the previous statements with which his 
delegation had associated itself.  But only by way of  emphasis, he wished to highlight Tanzania's 
views on a few important areas of the negotiations.   
509. On agriculture, Tanzania echoed the appeal that  the interests and needs of LDCs and other 
developing countries should be concre tely taken into account in all the three pillars of the agriculture 
negotiations, namely domestic suppor t, export competition and market access.  The modalities to be 
articulated should also pay particul ar attention to the issues of supply-side constraints as well as NTBs 
such as SPS and TBT with a view to enhancing the trade opportunities of their countries.  On market 
access, it underlined the need for secu re and predictable access for its agricultural products.  Equally 
important was the expeditious solution to the i ssue of cotton, as well as addressing food security 
concerns and the problems of NFIDCs.   
510. On NAMA, the African Ministers of Trade who had met in Cairo recently were concerned 
that some of the proposals on the formula submitted by some Members would result in deep tariff 
reductions to some African countries in comparison to  developed countries.  This was contrary to the 
principle of less than full reciprocity and S&D treatment enshrined in the Doha mandate. African countries would be adversely affected as these proposals would result in erosion of their preferences.  
This would undoubtedly deepen the crisis of de-industrialization and accentuate the unemployment 
and poverty crisis confronting them.  As an LD C, Tanzania was not expected to undertake tariff 
reduction commitments as per the July  2004 Decision.  However, it was still keenly interested in this 
matter as it was bound to affected through various  regional integration groupings to which it 
belonged.   
511. Tanzania supported the adoption of an appropria te formula or tariff reduction approach that 
allowed African countries to undertake industrial po licy and diversification objectives and take as 
priority the principles of less than full reciprocity and S&D treatment.  Tanzania needed policy space 
and flexibility that fully took into account LDCs' a nd African countries' develo pmental, financial and 
industrial development needs, and which removed the risk of de-i ndustrialization.  For LDCs, his 
delegation underlined the need for flexibility to determine their leve l of binding coverage 
commensurate with their development objectives as well as secure and predictable market access for 
their products.   
512. On trade facilitation, Tanzania acknowledged with  appreciation the progress so far.  This was 
an area of great interest to it in terms of interna tional trade, including handling of imports and exports 
of some of its land-locked neighbours.  As ne gotiations advanced in this area, his delegation 
emphasized the need for technical assistance and capacity  building particularly for LDCs like itself.  It 
underlined the position taken in the adopted m odalities that no binding commitments should be 
imposed on these countries beyond their capacities.   
513. Turning to development, his delegation had been  particularly taken aback by the lack of 
tangible progress on the mandate given at Doha to make S&D provisions more precise, effective and 
operational.  The lack of progress even on LDC Agr eement-specific proposals raised questions on the 
commitment of the membership to work for the integration of these particularly disadvantaged 
countries into the multilateral trading system.  Some  of the positions that had been taken in recent 
days in the work of the Special Session seemed to indicate reversal of the commitments made in the 
Doha Ministerial Declaration in relation to LDCs.  It was his de legation's hope that when Members 
resumed their work after the summer break, the entir e membership would recommit itself to the letter 
and spirit of the Doha mandate not only in respect  of the review of S&D provisions but also in  TN/C/M/19 
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 upholding the development focus of the Doha Round across the board.  Many of the statements made 
at the present meeting offered some promise in that  direction.  His delegation hoped that they would 
come true.  Tanzania would engage constructively in the process in all areas of the negotiations.   
514. The representative of St. Lucia  said his delegation supported the statement by Benin on behalf 
of the ACP group and by Jamaica.  One issue whic h was particularly disturbing was the lack of 
progress in the area of development.  He was referri ng not simply to the important negotiations in the 
CTD and the proposals of the LDCs and other deve loping countries, but add itionally it believed there 
needed to be the weaving into th e fabric of all negotiations the co ncept of S&D.  S&D was the ladder 
which would help countries to benefit from the refo rm and liberalization processes.  If the outcome of 
the DDA was to be balanced that ladder had to be made available to LDCs and more vulnerable 
Members because without it they would not be able  to benefit and Members would not have an 
outcome which reflected the original Doha mandate.   
515. The representative of Brazil  said that he wished to make some comments regarding other key 
areas of the Doha mandate from Brazil’s perspectiv e.  On NAMA, a good deal of progress had been 
achieved.  It was worth recalling, however, that so me obstacles still persisted.  The linkage between 
ambition and flexibility was artificial and unwarranted .  The flexibilities in NAMA had been spelt out 
in detail in the July Framework and these had been essential for the approval of that package.  It was 
the level of ambition in the formula that remained to  be negotiated and this de pended, on one hand, on 
the relationship of this contribution to the mandate, in  particular less than full reciprocity in reduction 
commitments and to the development objectives in the industrial sector and on the other hand, on the 
level of ambition in other areas, particularly ag riculture and anti-dumping.  Brazil continued to 
believe that the proposal by Argentina, Brazil and India (ABI) was the one that adhered most 
faithfully to the mandate and to the July Framework.  It could be adapted to fit the general level of 
ambition of the Round and to cater to the specific needs of different categories of countries.  His 
delegation agreed with the NAMA Chairman’s assessment that Members would only find the 
appropriate balance by going more deep ly into a numbers-based negotiation.   
516. On services, Brazil was committed to a significant outcome in these negotiations both in 
market access and rules.  Brazil's revised offer of  10 June signalled its continued commitment to the 
Doha mandate.  Brazil regarded with concern in itiatives to introduce parameters to assess trade 
liberalization in services.  It did not see the need at this stage for changes that would amount to a 
major departure from the positive-list approach of  the GATS, by selecting sectors that would be 
treated as parameters for the negotiations.  Given the GATS architecture it was not feasible to set 
benchmarks for sectors and modes of supply due to different starting points.  If Members were to 
correct disparities in the services negotiations they should start by correcting asymmetries among modes of supply.  Mode 4 was unde r-committed and his delegation had noted with concern a trend to 
treat this mode of supply as sensitive which could l ead to the perpetuation of existing distortions.  If 
these considerations were taken on board his de legation was prepared to examine alternative 
supplementary modalities which were compatible with the GATS and with the Doha mandate.   
517. He said the Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong would need to have parallel and substantive 
results in all areas of the negotiations including on ru les.  Rules were a major element of the overall 
package and an essential complement to the NAMA negotiations.  Members would need by Hong 
Kong a result for rules that was equivalent to modaliti es.  In order to achieve this they needed to 
accelerate the pace in order to engage as soon as pos sible in text-based negotiations.  The range and 
complexity of the issues would demand time-cons uming and focused discussions.  The informal 
discussions held so far by the Rules Chairman coul d provide the basis for a process along the lines of 
the room D or room F procedure used in the agriculture and NAMA negotiations.   
518. He said that the discussions in the CTD Special  Session in recent weeks were a microcosm of 
the Round.  A lot of work had been undertaken but  there was little to show for it.  Whilst all parties TN/C/M/19 
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 had engaged in earnest in the negotiations the resi stance on the part of developed countries to agree on 
additional flexibilities for the LDCs was unbecoming esp ecially in view of the extensive flexibilities 
those countries had traditionally enjoyed in many ar eas and for so long.  His delegation continued to 
believe that the main development outcome of  this Round would come from the market access 
negotiations. Nevertheless, a meaningful S&D package would be a necessary element of the final 
outcome.   
519. Another essential component of the deve lopment dimension of the Round was 
implementation.  Regrettably, there had been no progress on two issues that were very important to 
his delegation.  The first was the need for flexib ilities under the TRIMs Agreement in order to restore 
some measure of policy space to developing count ries.  The second was the need to address the 
relationship between the TRIPS Agreement and the CBD in a manner that would ensure a modicum 
of balance in the distribution of benefits  from intellectual property protection.   
520. In closing the meeting, the Chairman
 said that as this was the last TNC that he would be 
chairing he wished to say a few words of thanks fo r the support that he had received over the last few 
years.  He paid tribute to the constant support he had been able to count on from the present General 
Council Chairman, Ambassador Amina Mohamed and a ll her predecessors that he had worked with, 
Ambassador Shotaro Oshima, Ambassa dor Carlos Perez del Castillo and Ambassador Sergio Marchi.  
Their dedication to moving the negotiations forward had been invaluable and each had contributed in 
their own way to advancing the work of Members.  They had also helped him to develop a close level 
of coordination between the Chairman of the TNC and the Chairman of the General Council.  He 
believed this was beneficial for the process.   
521. He also offered his sincere thanks to the Chairp ersons of the negotiating groups.  Their efforts 
as Chairs to lead participants through the complicat ed process and the vast amount of work they had 
accomplished deserved to be recognized.  The Chai rs had also been very helpful to him in 
coordinating work overall and through their reports and assessments had provided vital input to the 
discussions in the TNC.   
522.  He expressed his gratitude to his "Fri ends" on implementation issues who had shown 
dedication and determination in conducting re peated consultations on his behalf.   
523. Most of all he thanked the Members for thei r support and commitment.  An enormous amount 
of effort had been put into the negotiations.  He had been particularly fortunate to have enjoyed a 
significant level of support from Ministers and Seni or Officials, who had supported the TNC process 
directly by either being present in TNC meetings or by supporting the work  through meetings of 
various formats and configurations around the world.  He also said that all delegations with whom he 
had had the honour of working ha d shown a high degree of professionalism and commitment to the 
multilateral trade negotiations and he was most grat eful for that.  He said the negotiators in the 
Geneva process were the bac kbone of this negotiation.   
524. He also thanked the WTO Secretariat for thei r hard work in preparing and servicing the 
meetings of Members.  He also expressed his gratitude to his team of Deputy-Director Generals for 
their support. 
525. Over the course of the last few years, some had characterised his role as Chairman of the 
TNC as similar to that of Sisyphus destined to c ontinually push a reluctant boulder up the hill.  Others 
had been more charitable in seeing his role as that  of a chess master trying to bring order to a 
complicated chess game with indepe ndent minded chess pieces.  In reality, his role had neither been 
that of Sisyphus nor that of a chess master.  Rather, he believed that his main role had been to provide 
Members with a forum in which they could see the tota lity of the negotiations and to keep in sight the 
real importance of what Members were engaged in.  The TNC had a vital oversight role.  In the busy  TN/C/M/19 
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 period that awaited Members after the summer brea k, the need for close coordination and balance 
across all subjects would be even more important.  The period ahead, with only about three months of 
preparation before the Hong Kong Ministerial Confer ence also called for effe ctive use of Members' 
time.   
526. He knew that all Members had from time to time be en frustrated by the tedium of rhetoric and 
repetition that inevitably crept into the discussions in the TNC.  Some of this was unavoidable and 
sometimes necessary to release tensions.  But what  he hoped was that in the forthcoming period 
Members would put the TNC to more effective use.  He urged Members to make the most of the oversight role that the TNC had and to lend as much  support to his successor Mr . Pascal Lamy as they 
had given him.  He assured participants that a lthough he would no longer be Chairman of the TNC 
after August, no one would follow their progress more  closely than him and he would continue to 
support their efforts in every possible way.   
527. Lastly, he said that the date of the next meeting of the TNC would be announced by the 
Secretariat as soon as possible.   
528. The Trade Negotiations Committee took note
 of the statements.   
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