1314 th plenary meeting Wednesday 26, March 2014 10:00 a.m.

President: Ambassador Toshio Sano (Japan)

Mr. Secretary General, Excellencies and Distinguished Delegates,

(1) I now would like to turn to the draft Schedule of Activities which I circulated last Friday, 21st March, as a proposal from the President, with the intention of it to be adopted by the Conference today. The draft has been placed in paper copy in your country’s pigeon hole as document CD/WP.580. It is also placed before you and additional copies are available on the table by the entrance. The document is a draft based on the non-paper circulated during the Italian Presidency in which I reflected the comments from the Member States including those submitted in a written form to the Secretariat by the deadline. I believe that this is a good product of extensive Presidential consultations with most of the Member States since the beginning of this year

(2) In fact, there are some views not reflected in this draft, such as requesting to adopt substantive reports made by the five coordinators at the Plenary, or to change the title of the document. I believe, however, from a practical and operational points of view that it is still a good compromised text from all parties, taking into account that we must come up with one solution to push the Conference forward while each Member State has different views. With regard to the title, I kept the original one, namely Schedule of Activities, since it seems to be more a standard term among Member States. To conclude, no one might be a hundred percent satisfied with this draft, but I believe it is a forward looking text and hopefully acceptable for all. I thank all those who have provided us with these constructive comments and views.

Mr. Secretary General, Excellencies and Distinguished Delegates,

(1) I would like to thank all the Member States for their cooperation and flexibility to consolidate this Schedule of Activities. I also would like to express my deep gratitude to those who volunteered to serve as Coordinators. Since it is not an easy task at all, I would like to call on every delegate to extend to the Coordinators your full support that may contribute to facilitating their tasks. Furthermore, I am grateful to the other members of the Presidencies, especially my predecessors, and the Secretariat for their continuous support and the excellent team work we have.

(2) Although today’s adoption is a step forward, it is still up to us to decide whether we can make best use of the “dual track approach” in order to keep the political momentum and maintain our expertise for future negotiations.

(3) To this end, I will continue to work during the inter-sessional period for the full implementation of the dual structure. Although the first session closes at the end of this week, together with other members of the P6, I plan to soon meet with Ambassador Gallegos, the Co-Chair of the IWG, and Ambassador Woolcott, the Vice Co-Chair, to consult on how we should proceed the IWG. I also intend to consult with the five Coordinators to better prepare for the upcoming substantive discussions. In this connection, I strongly encourage all the Member States to benefit from the inter-sessional period to prepare and consider bringing the experts into these substantive meetings. For my part, I will keep my door open for any advice or inquiries and keep you up to date on the consultations which I will have during inter-sessional period.