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To: Director of Commerce and Industry, Hong Kong.
From: Counsellor (Hong Kong Affairs), Geneva.
Memorandum No. 141
File No. GVA/10/8/1
282
Date: 16 October 1970
U.N.C.T.A.D.
Special Committee on Preferences and Special Session of the Trade and Development Board
The Second part of the 4th Session of the Special Committee on Preferences was held from 21 September to 12 October. The Committee produced a final Report containing agreed Conclusions on a "mutually acceptable" system of generalised preferences. This Report was then considered and endorsed at the Fourth Special Session of the Trade and Development Board during the afternoon of the 12th and on the 13th October. The Board agreed to transmit the documentation to the General Assembly for appropriate inclusion in the strategy for the Second U.N. Development Decade and in time for the celebration of the twenty fifth anniversary of the United Nations later this month.
2. This means that the Special Committee has completed its mandate and, although its life has been technically prolonged until the 11th Session of the Trade and Development Board in August, 1971, it is unlikely to meet again in its present form.
3. After some long sessione, including one lasting till 3.30 a.m. on Sunday, 10th October, the Report was finally adopted in the Committee at 2.30 p.m. on 12 October in a somewhat emotional atmosphere of congratulatory speeches and a standing ovation for the Chairman (Swaminathan, India). In his closing speech the Chairman spoke of the opening of a new era in world trading relationships and of being present at a historical moment. He distinctly heard "the rustling of the page of history".
Report
3. I enclose a copy of the Final Report of the Special Committee. The most important section of this is "Part One Agreed Conclusions" which should be read in conjunction with Chapter I(D) - "Concluding Debate". These conclusions were worked out over long sessions in a contact group run by the Chairman and the Secretary General of UNCTAD which operated from 28 September to 10 October and which split up frequently into drafting groups of various sorts and sizes. The rate of progress in the contact group was slow because proceedings had continuously to be interrupted, sometimes for days at a time, while issues were taken back for debate in geographical groups and in the Group of 77 and Groups B and D. In the meantime, the Plenary continued with the less controversial issues of the general debate and examination of the individual schemes of donor countries. The controversial issues dealt with in the conclusions, such as reverse preferences, safeguards, beneficia- ries, institutional arrangements, etc., only came to the Plenary for discussion after the contact group and the drafting groups had thrashed out draft conclusions acceptable (more or less) to all sides (i.e. during the "Saturday night and Sunday morning" of October 10 - 11).
/Organisation and Progress...
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