First sessions were on agriculture, non-agricultural market access and development issues show that differences remain on a number of issues, the ministers handling these issues reported to heads of delegations at an evening meeting on 14 December 2005.
They had been asked to “facilitate” consultations on these subjects by the conference Chairperson, John Tsang, Hong Kong's Commerce, Industry and Technology Secretary. He told the heads of delegations that time is running short, so they need to move quickly to negotiations that are based on a text.
At a separate formal meeting on cotton, a number of African countries called for a clear decision on this at the Hong Kong Ministerial Conference, arguing that failure to reach agreement would undermine the credibility of the WTO.
The four countries that had originally proposed the cotton initiative (Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali) called for members to act quickly and concretely, in order to help countries escape a situation that the Chad minister described as worse than misery.
They blamed subsidies in some rich countries on depressed prices and repeated the proposal they submitted to the Cotton Sub-Committee in Geneva a month earlier.
Some other African countries (Niger, Cameroon, Guinea, Uganda, Ghana and Rwanda) supported the proposal and said they are alsoaffected.
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