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WT/GC/M/74
1 July 2002
The
Chairman recalled that under Item 3 of the Doha
Ministerial Conference Agenda, Ministers had requested the General
Council to determine the venue and dates of the Fifth Session of the
Ministerial Conference. At its meeting in December 2001, the
General Council had agreed that Mexico would be the venue for the
Fifth Session. Since then, he had held consultations with a large
number of delegations on the matter of the dates of the Fifth Session,
and had also sought Members' advice in numerous individual
conversations and meetings with delegations, including with
representatives from regional and other groupings in the WTO. In
addition, he had also been able to use the opportunity of the previous
month's Geneva Week to raise this and other issues with non-resident
delegations, as these issues were very pertinent to them as well. At
these meetings, he had informed delegations that the Mexican
Government's own preference for dates would be the period of
mid-September to mid-October, and also that Mexico had been
considering the two sites of Acapulco and Cancún for holding this
meeting. He had also indicated that Mexico's choice of the
September-October period had to do with practical considerations,
since at both of the sites under consideration, Members would run into
either the domestic or the foreign tourist season on either side of
the September-October period. This, of course, had implications for
both security and logistics, the ease with which the Conference could
and should be conducted, block-booking of hotel accommodation, and the
higher cost and availability of both hotel accommodation and air
transport.
Nearly all of the delegations he had consulted had said that they
were comfortable with and wished to respect the host Government's
preferred period for many different reasons. In the view of many of
these delegations, the Fifth Ministerial Conference should be a
substantive meeting, and sufficient time should therefore be allowed
for the ongoing negotiations and other work to progress to a
meaningful level, as well as for technical assistance and
capacity-building efforts to filter through. For some delegations,
cost considerations were also important. Several had urged the need to
avoid undue slippage in the dates , for fear of
not allowing adequate time to follow up on any decisions taken by
Ministers, especially in view of the 1 January 2005 deadline for the
conclusion of the negotiations. A few had expressed a preference for
dates in either July/August or in October/early November, and several
had flagged the need to avoid clashes with either the UN General
Assembly, which was expected to begin on 16 September 2003, or with
Ramadan, which started in late October and lasted for approximately
one month. Mexico had also informed him that it would have national
holidays on both 15 and 16 September 2003. Delegations had
made clear that a decision on the dates for the Fifth Session should
be taken at the present meeting, given the link with planning for the
substantive work that needed to be done under the Doha Development
Agenda, and to allow Mexico to make all of the necessary arrangements.
The representative of Mexico said that in determining the
site of the Fifth Ministerial Conference, Mexico had considered a
number of cities which could provide the services and infrastructure
required to carry out such a meeting. Its initial assessment had led
to a short list that contained Acapulco and Cancún. Representatives
of his Government and the Secretariat had visited both cities a few
weeks earlier in order to enable them to take a final decision. While
those visits had indicated that both cities could host a Ministerial
Conference, his Government and the Secretariat had agreed that Cancún
offered certain advantages over Acapulco. He then made a brief slide
presentation of the facilities that Cancún offered, and highlighted
three major advantages: first, the geographical location made security
and logistics easier; second, the fact that it was a tourist
destination guaranteed high-quality accommodation and transportation;
and third, the convention centre offered the necessary elements for a
productive and smooth conference. Furthermore, as Mexico intended that
this Conference be hosted by Latin America and the Caribbean, Cancún
had the additional characteristic of being part of the Caribbean
region. Mexico had therefore taken the liberty of suggesting that the
Ministerial Conference be held in Cancún.
Regarding possible dates for the meeting, the Chairman had provided
a description of the views expressed in the consultations held thus
far. Mid-September was a date which no Member had suggested, but which
appeared to be the most reasonable from the point of view of
logistics, hotel accommodations, flows of visitors and even the
climate. The latter aspect was important, given the greater risk of
hurricanes the closer one came to October. Taking all of this into
account, his delegation proposed the dates of 10-14 September 2003 as the dates for the Fifth Session.
The General Council took note of the statements and of
Mexico's choice of Cancún as the site for the Fifth Session, and agreed
that the Fifth Session would be held on 10-14 September 2003.
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