18 July 2008: Comments for SAICM teleconference

Dear National Focal Points of the Asia-Pacific countries,

After I sent you a message about the teleconference of the Friends of the Secretariat of SAICM, I attended the African Regional Meeting on SAICM, held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on 16-17 July. Here I also had opportunity to discuss some issues with the Regional Focal Points for Africa, GRULAC and WEOG. Unfortunately the RFP from Central and Eastern Europe could not attend.

The African Regional Meeting produced a number of regional position papers on such issues as ICCM rules of procedures, financial considerations and relationship to IFCS. But among other things I would like to report you about the African position on the planning for the OELTWG, on which I solicited your views in my e-mail earlier this week.

Africa, while preferring travel funding for at least one participant from each developing and transition economy country, it accepted the proposal to move the meeting to Latin America and Caribbean region, with travel support to limited number of countries. It also requested travel support for 20 participants from the region, comprising three government representatives from each of the five subregions, and five IGO/NGO participants. With regard to the bureau structure for OELTWG, Africa supports a five-member bureau, with one representative from each of the five UN regions.

These proposals will be an important starting point for the teleconference of the Friends of the Secretariat on Wednesday 23 July. While waiting for your response to my e-mail earlier this week, I would further submit to you my thoughts on the issues that we are going to discuss at the teleconference, taking into account the positions of the African region. With regard to the rescheduling of OELTWG, I would concur with African region to accept the proposal to move the location and the date as a second best solution. I would also request that due attention be paid to the regional balance when considering the number of funded participants from each region.

There are a number of other issues for teleconference discussion, as described in the Document 4 that I forwarded earlier this week. The first one is the bureau structure. Here I would also support African proposal to have a five-member bureau. The second issue is the establishment of drafting groups and contact groups. Here I would say that these groups should be established as need arises, but number of concurrent breakout groups should be strictly limited. The third issue is a proposal to have a brief discussion on all the agenda items at the beginning of the OELTWG meeting to enable the identification of issues that need in-depth discussion. I would see no problem in this proposal. There are also other questions described in the teleconference paper, including the nomination of bureau member, but we could consider these after the teleconference.

I would welcome your views on the issues I described above, so that I can represent the regional voice as much as possible at the teleconference next week. The time for your consideration may be too short, but please understand that the African regional meeting finished only yesterday.

Best regards,
Esak
Eisaku Toda
Asia-Pacific Regional Focal Point for SAICM
E-mail:saicm@iges.or.jp