1. The Chairperson said that he had held informal consultations on this matter, in order to explore whether it would be possible to make progress in coming to decisions on the 15 pending requests from international intergovernmental organizations. He wished to underline that the delay that had occurred in this regard did not help in giving the WTO a favourable image. In these informal consultations, he had proposed that, as a first step, the Council might consider first the requests from those multilateral organizations which had obtained observer status in other bodies of the WTO, in particular those which were agencies related to the United Nations. In this connection, Members had agreed that additional information should be sought from the World Health Organization ("WHO").
