13-JUL-1993 12:25
DEL (UK)
33 1 45249837 P.03
(voluntary contributions) and that the other major activity which the OECD had been asked to
to undertake the provision of the Secretariat for the Task Force for follow-up work would be virtually entirely funded by confirmed voluntary contributions of $200,000 each from Denmark, the Netherlands, the US and Germany. He said that no work would in any case be undertaken until the promised resources were in hand. The only work which would not be funded by extrabudgetray contributions would be a tiny proportion of his time and that of other senior staff which would be devoted to supervisory work this was entirely manageable and could be fitted into his other commitments. After Bill Long had introduced the item, the EC made an offer of an additional 100,000 ecu. Canada said that Bill Long's reassurances about resources had convinced them that they could support all the proposed work (and they offered an additional 80,000 dollars towards the performance reviews). Japan and Australia said that they could also support (both had had reservations largely because thay saw this as work being imposed on the OECD because of a decision in another forum). The draft entry in the minutes was, therefore, approved and the work will go ahead the understanding that it must be funded by extrabudgetary contributions.
Comment: it is a pity that the UK, which supports Lucerne follow-up work enthusiastically, cannot offer even limited financial support similar to that offered by Canada. We have contributed a number of voluntary grants to environmental work in recent years, and while DOE Ministerial support would have to be sought, budgetary procedures allow such contributions. Bill Long has privately with me been rather scornful of our professed "strong support" for Lucerne follow-up which has been coupled with our usual firm line on resources
he knows that we have significant bilateral programmes with Eastern Europe, that we give high priority to environmental projects, and cannot understand why on this occasion we cannot channel some resources through the OECD (if we decided to support an environmental review, for example, this could be portrayed as a joint OECD/UK effort and we would get some of the credit, without having to do very much of the work).
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iv) Discussion of the OECD Group at the FAO
Brief discussion which concluded that it was not appropriate to discuss this sort of issue in this forum. Several countries intervened in the discussion, some without a clear understanding of what the OECD group at the FAO is. Spain suggested that there was no such thing as an official OECD group in Rome. France was not sure whether the group was an unofficial grouping of OECD countries' representatives, or something akin to the WEOG. The French Ambassador said that we did not know enough about the nature of the group and that we could not be expected to discuss it in this forum. Our Ambassador agreed and said we
said we should avoid discussion. It appeared to be an unofficial group. Speaking personally it did not seem right for Poland to join. We should certainly not do anything which might harm the UN's existing electoral arrangements. Turkey
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