FIRST MEETING
PREMIERE SEANCE
PRIMERA SESION

(13 November 1991)

The First Meeting was opened at 14.30 hours
Mr Waleed A. Elkhereiji. Chairman of Commission I. presiding

La première séance est ouverte à 14 h 30
sous la présidence de M. Waleed A. Elkhereiji. Président de la Commission I

Se abre la primera sesión a las 14.30 horas
bajo la presidencia del Sr. Waleed A. Elkhereiji. Presidente de la
Comisión I

CHAIRMAN (Original language Arabic): In the name of God, the Compassionate and Merciful. What I would first like to do is to thank all of you for having elected the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which I represent, to chair Commission I of this FAO Conference.

In this Commission we shall be discussing food policies and agricultural policies, and we shall also be looking at the general outlook in these areas. This is the main forum for discussions of general policy, and these discussions are to be held on the basis of the contributions which are made at the Plenary Session.

The General Committee has put forward the name of Mr Manuel Vara Ochoa, Ambassador for Peru, as the First Deputy Chairman. Mr. Tadeusz Strojwas, who is the Representative of Poland, has been put forward as the Second Deputy Chairman. On everyone's behalf, I would like to congratulate them both on the nominations.

I would like now to refer to document C 91/2, which gives the agenda and sets out the work to be done by this Commission. We shall be discussing the following items: 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13. Those are the items on the agenda which it falls to us to discuss, and I hope that our discussions of those various points of the agenda will be successful.

I would also like to refer to document C 91/12 and particularly paragraph 35 of that document. This refers to the need for us to prune as far as possible the number of resolutions; it states that these resolutions should be restricted to those issues which really require an official resolution from this Conference. I suggest that we hold our sessions from 09.30 until 12.30 for the morning sitting and from 14.30 to 17.30 for the afternoon sitting. I do hope that all of you will be able to be here at that allotted time so that we do not have to wait to get a quorum.

I would also like to remind you of what has been agreed regarding the Drafting Committee. For Africa, Lesotho and Kenya. For Asia, Malaysia and India. For Latin America and the Caribbean, Costa Rica and Uruguay. For the Middle East, Libya and Syria. For the OECD, Turkey, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden and Germany. These representatives will select a Chairman from amongst the membership of the Drafting Committee.

I would ask you all to try to be brief and succinct when you take the floor, because we have a great deal on our agenda and we do not want to have night sessions if we can avoid it. Tomorrow, in pursuance of the resolution taken by the General Meeting, we will not meet in the morning -that is to say, our second meeting will be held at 14.30 hours tomorrow.

We will finish at 17.30 and this means that there will be a night sitting which will last from 19.30 to 22.30. On Friday, there will be no meeting, the reason being that Commission III will be meeting.