6. The representative of Hungary, speaking on behalf of Bulgaria, Lithuania, and Slovenia, said that the mandate of paragraph 6 of the Declaration should be interpreted in light of the whole Declaration and should not be limited to a particular set of WTO Members or a set of diseases. The aim of the Declaration was to provide flexibility in certain provisions of general applicability and, therefore, the diseases listed in paragraph 1 of the Declaration were merely illustrative and not meant to limit the scope of the Declaration itself in any way. He also said that although paragraph 1 made clear that the Declaration was the result of the initiative of a significant number of developing and least-developed countries that faced severe public health problems, the applicability of the flexibility clarified in the Declaration could not be limited to the countries mentioned in paragraph 1. In his view, the mandate of paragraph 6 was a neutral one and referred only to countries with no or insufficient manufacturing capacity in the pharmaceutical sector and not to any established category of WTO Members. It should not, therefore, exclude those countries that chose not to become developing countries under the rules of the WTO. He pointed out that many countries in his part of the world had comparable or lower manufacturing capabilities than many developing countries in the WTO. He said that it would be socially insensitive, and politically and economically unjustified, to exclude a priori a group of countries under the scope of the solution presented under paragraph 6. In this respect, he fully empathized with the position of most developing countries that were opposed to any a priori limitation on the scope of beneficiaries on the importing side. He also supported the position that any limitation on potential suppliers, by unnecessary narrowing of sources and limiting competition, would have negative implications for prices. He said that the countries he represented attached great importance to finding an effective and permanent solution under paragraph 6 by the end of 2002 but that it would be extremely difficult for them to be party to any narrow interpretation of the Declaration.
