15. The Chairman said that paragraph 18, which referred to paragraph 12, did not give the Council a separate mandate to discuss GI extension. He reiterated his proposal that the Chair of the Council would continue consultations, as a "friend of the TNC Chair", on how to carry forward the work on GI extension and other outstanding TRIPS implementation issues. The proposed agenda was not intended to imply that the issue of GI extension would disappear, it was merely a question of procedure.
