FIFTH MEETING

CINQUIEME SEANCE

QUINTA SESION

(12 November 1993)

The Fifth meeting was opened at 9.50 hours
Mr Hermann Redl, Chairman of Commission I, presiding

La cinquième séance est ouverte à 9 h 50
sous la présidence de M. Hermann Redl, Président de la Commission I

Se abre la quinta sesión a las 9.50 horas
bajo la presidencia del Sr. Hermann Redl, Presidente de la Comisión I

CHAIRMAN (Original language German): May I first of all welcome you all. Before we begin our work on Item 6.2 of the Agenda, allow me to make a brief comment. As delegates will know, Conference and the Governing Body have decided that resolutions should be kept to a minimum and only substantive issues should be dealt with. As regards procedure, I will ask the Secretary to inform you how to table resolutions, and what the procedure is.

W.A. LAMADÉ (Secretary, Commission I): It might be useful at this stage to refer delegates to the document on the arrangements for the Twenty-seventh Session of Conference, C 93/12, which has on page 6 two paragraphs on resolutions and the Resolutions Committee.

In paragraph 35 the appeal just made is again emphasized, that is: "The Council reiterates the view repeatedly expressed on previous occasions that resolutions should be kept to a minimum...". Attached to document C93/12 is Appendix D which sets out criteria for Conference resolutions if these resolutions are deemed to be really necessary. One of the points made under paragraph 3 (b) in this Appendix says that "Draft resolutions shall be transmitted to the Resolutions Committee before they are submitted to a Commission...". So any resolution which is being formulated goes the following route. For those members of the Commission who are not familiar with FAO procedures, I thought I should inform them of this.

As was done yesterday, delegations who want to present a resolution should inform the meeting of this. This is the correct procedure. Thereafter resolutions should be handed in to the Secretariat of Commission I. These draft resolutions have to be prepared in a certain form. I will come back to that in a second. They will be transmitted to the Secretary of the Resolution Committee and presented by him to the Resolution Committee. The text of the resolution which the Resolutions Committee agrees upon will then be presented to your Commission here for review, discussion and approval.

One more word on the format of the resolution being proposed. I refer delegates to document C 93/28 on Plant Genetic Resources, an item we are going to discuss next week. There are in this document two resolutions which have been formulated and transmitted to us here by the Council, and they are in the format in which resolutions should be prepared and handed in to the Secretariat.