157. Responding to the delegation of the United States, the Secretariat explained that, at the meeting in September, when the Council was running out of time in the discussion on extension, two delegations, the European Communities and Sri Lanka, had said that in the interest of saving time they would not read out the whole of their statements they had prepared and requested that their longer written statements be reproduced in the minutes. No objections had been expressed and that was how the matter was left. However, it was for the reason that the US delegation had raised that the Chairman had earlier at the present meeting wanted to clarify the situation so as to ensure that there was indeed acceptance of this practice by all Members, given the possibility of the sort of concerns that the United States and Australia had mentioned could arise.
