23. The representative of the United States fully associated himself with the intervention made by Australia, especially with respect to exercising some caution concerning deadlines. The WTO had yet to establish the date for the Fifth Ministerial Conference. He would be particularly concerned about any undue speed with which it might be sought to arrive at a common negotiating basis. In this respect, he shared Australia's observations about heavily-bracketed texts. Such a text would emerge at the appropriate time as one got closer to the actual deadline for concluding the negotiations. He was not particularly optimistic that the Special Session could achieve results this year.
