22. The representative of Argentina said his delegation commended the Chairman for the work he had carried out in the TRIPS Council and in other fora of the WTO. He thanked him for a job well done and welcomed his summary of the state of play of the negotiations on the register, as mandated under the Doha Development Agenda. Rather than going into any details of the report, that others had already covered, he wished to make only one point regarding their mandate. Bridging the gaps between different positions and reaching agreements in different fields of the multilateral negotiations of the Doha Round required a great deal of patience. After waiting patiently for 42 years until agriculture was included in the Uruguay Round, and despite the continued efforts at liberalization and the elimination of subsidies in agriculture, Members were still far from having liberalized trade in agriculture at the same level as had been achieved in other sectors of the negotiations. Against this background, the common sense approach would have been to accept a voluntary GI register a long time ago, namely already during the Uruguay Round. Had that been done, Members would by now surely have tested the functioning of the register and made any necessary adjustments. But the wish to have everything unfortunately meant that Members were now stuck with this negotiation. He said that a more flexible approach in this Round would allow the establishment of a voluntary register, with precisions on how to apply it, and respecting Members' national legislations. The other TRIPS issues that had been mentioned were not mandated to be discussed in this body but fell under the consultations of the Director-General, and his delegation was open to discussing them there. Argentina did not support the document linking TRIPS/CBD with the issue of GI extension. He believed that linking these issues was a mistake because TRIPS/CBD had its own merits and should be properly discussed as a separate issue.
