138. Turning to the roadmap, the Chairperson said that he could see the discussions as evolving in three phases. Assuming that the Secretariat compilation paper were available early in 2003, he would ask Members to study it carefully. He believed that it could be a good basis for the Council's future work. In particular, delegations could imagine holding an open-ended informal meeting to discuss the contents laid out in the compilation before the first formal session in 2003. That discussion would hopefully lead to providing participants with some useful thoughts about the future course of action. From the discussions, he would informally and orally share with the Members an outline of what he viewed as potential elements for the next step of the Council's work. He would anticipate that delegations could exchange their views on the outline of issues, trying as much as possible to find areas where there was some degree of commonality. Progress on this could serve as the foundation for a paper aimed at serving as a common basis for the Council's future negotiations. This paper, which he envisaged for the second meeting, might contain suggestions for common language where there was some general understanding, together with options where a divergence of views remained. While he was still open to the possibility of a group of Members preparing such a paper, it seemed increasingly unlikely that that would happen. Any paper he would prepare would be on his own responsibility, without prejudice to the positions of Members and without prejudging the outcome of the negotiations. As related to the timing of the introduction of that paper, while he understood the concerns about introducing the Chair’s text prematurely, he said that delegations should also be aware of the mandated deadline for the negotiations. In this regard, it would seem that the latest that the paper could be introduced would be before the second meeting in April. As had been seen in previous negotiating processes, serious discussions only really began when there was a common basis for negotiations. If the Members were to fulfil their mandate by the deadline, they would need an adequate amount of time to do so.
