5. The Chairman recalled that Ministers in Hong Kong had agreed that negotiations of the Special Session should be intensified in order to complete them within the overall time-frame for the conclusion of the negotiations that had been foreseen in the Doha Declaration. He said that, at the TNC meeting of 6 February 2006, the TNC Chair had noted that there appeared to be a shared intention by the Members to move ahead across the whole of the DDA, making progress on all issues, and a willingness to do so by "moving in concert". The TNC Chair had also made the point that it was necessary to move urgently to negotiating elements of texts. The Chairman of the Special Session then drew Members' attention to the "Timelines for 2006" paper, circulated as JOB(06)/13, which provided for a working document of the Special Session to be on the table by July 2006. This fully reflected his own assessment that, bearing in mind the end-of-year deadline for the Doha negotiations as a whole, it would be necessary to have, before the summer break, a working document which could be used as a basis for the final product and in respect of which there would be a good degree of understanding among Members as to where the main outstanding difficulties to be resolved lay. Clearly, in order to achieve this by July, it would be desirable to have made progress in unblocking, well in advance of that time, the key difficulties that had impeded the work so far.
6. He further recalled that his report to the TNC (TN/IP/14), which was taken note of in the Hong Kong Ministerial Declaration, referred to important differences remaining on two key issues, namely the issues of legal effects and participation. The report further recognized that additional work was required on a range of other points, including on the question of costs and administrative burdens for WTO Members, in particular for developing countries. The report noted that it would be difficult to make major headway on these issues, together with other details of the mechanism to be established, without greater convergence on the two key issues.
7. He informed Members that, on the basis of what had been agreed in Hong Kong and of the guidance from the TNC meeting, he had been consulting with delegations on how the Special Session's work might be best organized. It was important to find a way of "changing gear" in these negotiations so as to be able to make progress on the issues that needed to be clarified in order to be in a position to produce the document required by July. As a result of these consultations, he had circulated to delegations, by fax and on his own responsibility, a list of the priority concerns that had been raised by delegations for discussions in this meeting. The paper listed five such priority concerns, in the order in which they appeared in the side-by-side document (TN/IP/W/12), namely participation, notification, registration, legal effects/consequences of registration, and fees and costs. He suggested that the Special Session take up each of these areas in turn. The paper further said that it had been suggested that, in discussing each area of priority concern, certain issues might be explicitly addressed as appropriate, namely: the impact of the proposals on the principle of territoriality; their impact on the existing balance of rights and obligations; their impact on developing countries; their impact on national systems/jurisdictions; and administrative burdens. He added that the discussion of the priority concerns and of the issues listed would not preclude other aspects from being discussed. He proposed that the Special Session organize its work on this basis.
