(from "Chairman's Report of the Forty-Fourth Annual Meeting")

(1)

focussing the work of the Technical Committee on the Comprehensive Assessment, RMP and whale sanctuaries (Agenda Items 11 and 12);

(2)

producing a verbatim report instead of a formal report of the proceedings of the Technical Committee;

(3)

producing the Scientific Committee report in advance of the opening day of the plenary session;

(4)

providing for a sound relay of Technical Committee proceedings for the press.

Work of the Technical Committee
The general consensus was that the proposal put forward by the Secretariat should be acted upon on a trial basis at the 44th Annual Meeting subject to agreement at the Commissioners' meeting. A number of delegations emphasised the importance of providing for two levels of debate on the very important agenda items such as 11 and 12 in order to assist non-native English speakers and to allow time for informal discussion and reflection after debate in the Technical Committee. The USA hesitated to support instituting any changes to be in place for the 1992 meeting.

Report of the Technical Committee
The Committee favoured the production of a formal but more concise report, if the work of the Technical Committee was limited to Items 11 and 12.

Report of the Scientific Committee
The Secretariat advised that following the Commission's request last year, special arrangements had been made to enable the report to be available four days in advance of the Commission meeting. Delegations were concerned that the report should not be publicly available before the opening day of the plenary session. The Chairman of the Commission agreed that the Secretariat should be authorised to make the report available to Commissioners, named official delegates and members of the Scientific Committee only, provided it remained confidential - and carried a statement of confidentiality - until loam on 29 June.

Press arrangements for Technical Committee
It was noted that the Press already had access to a sound relay of the Commission itself. Some delegations favoured extending these arrangements to the Technical Committee, although others preferred to move with less haste. It was suggested that, for this year, the sound relay of the Technical Committee could be introduced on a trial basis.

21.2 Action arising
The Committee noted that final decisions on these matters would be taken by Commissioners.

In the plenary, St Lucia expressed its reservations over the sound relay of the Technical Committee proceedings to the Press, and the Chairman indicated that the Commissioners had agreed to proposals (1) and (3) - the work of the Technical Committee and the preparation of the Scientific Committee report.

The Secretary pointed out a problem which had arisen after the meeting of the Finance and Administration Committee, when some of the Sub-committees had received many requests from NGOs to attend. This created serious problems of overcrowding, and he suggested that NGOs should be asked if they wished to attend any of these smaller meetings when they accepted the invitation to attend the Annual Meeting as observers. Their final acceptance would still be decided by the agreement of the meeting concerned.

21.3 Amendment of Rules of Procedure
It was agreed that action on considering amendments to the Rules of Procedure for both the Technical and Scientific Committees and the terms of reference of Sub-committees and Working Groups should be deferred until the 45th session in order that account be taken of the experience gained from the trials proposed this year.

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