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The following is a transcript (English portion) of the Secretary for Commerce, Industry and Technology, Mr John Tsang, responding to media questions on the World Trade Organization Hong Kong Ministerial Conference at the West Wing of the Central Government Offices today (October 25):
Reporter : There have been reports saying that the MC6 might be called off. What is Hong Kong's view on that?
SCIT : There has been some speculation in the media recently that the Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong may be called off because of various reasons. This is purely speculation. We are actively organising the meeting right now and I do not see any reason how this meeting could be postponed or delayed. There is in fact quite a bit of discussion in Europe right now among the members concerned, particularly on the progress in the agriculture area. Hopefully we are expecting to see a substantive offer coming from the European Union on Thursday in response to the ambitious offer that was put on the table by Rob Portman of the United States a couple of weeks ago. With that, we can have some kind of informal arrangements, we can seek to multi-lateralise that and open up the opportunities for other issues to be discussed so that we could try to bring that to a more specific level of understanding by the time they come to Hong Kong.
Reporter : Is there a possibility of a delay and what is the Hong Kong Government contingency plan on that?
SCIT : There is no possibility of any delay. As I was saying that it is a consensus system, it requires the consensus of 148 members in agreeing to hold the meeting in Hong Kong, so it would require the consensus of 148 members to agree to postpone it. Nobody has ever spoken about that to me formally or informally, not to mention that any such thing has been raised in the General Council in Geneva.
Reporter : Can you assure that the meeting will go on no matter what happens?
SCIT : The meeting will go on.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Issued at HKT 13:17
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