The 1st meeting of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (COP-MOP 1) took place on 23-27 February 2004 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It concluded with the adoption of decisions on: decision procedures; information sharing and the Biosafety Clearing-House; capacity-building; handling, transport, packaging and identification of living modified organisms (LMOs); compliance procedures and mechanisms; a process to elaborate rules and procedures for liability and redress; monitoring and reporting; the programme budget; guidance to the financial mechanism (i.e. the Global Environment Facility); and the medium term programme of work for the period between the second and fifth meeting of COP-MOP. See daily updates and press reports at http://www.biodiv.org/meetings/mop-01/press/default.asp; official documents (available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish) and information documents (mostly in English only) at http://www.biodiv.org/meetings/mop-01/docs.aspx; or contact [email protected] for further information.

05/03/2004