The Chairman stated that, as set out in the work programme adopted by Members in the CTG meeting of 22 March 2002, the Council for Trade in Goods would carry out its work on trade facilitation in the course of four formal sessions until the end of 2002. Following the meeting in May, the Council was now meeting for a second session, which, like the previous one, had three core agenda items: (1) Article VIII of the GATT 1994; (2) Trade facilitation needs and priorities of Members, particularly of developing and least developed countries; and (3) Technical assistance and capacity building. Concerning the first item, the Chairman recalled Members' agreement that, while this session would focus on GATT Article VIII, delegations would be free to also address questions related to Articles V and X. Any delegation wishing to speak on those Articles would therefore have the opportunity to do so under agenda item 1 as well. This might be particularly the case with regard to Article X, where many delegations had noted at the last session that they had not had time to study some of the papers that had been submitted only shortly before the meeting. For this reason, the airgram also listed all the communications that had been previously submitted on Article X. It further included a paper the WCO had presented at the last meeting, and which had recently been circulated as a CTG document, following consultations held with one delegation. Several additional papers had also been prepared for this meeting. With respect to agenda item 1, the Secretariat had drafted another background note, this time addressing GATT Article VIII, in response to Members' request for such a document at an informal meeting on trade facilitation of 25 February 2002. Communications addressing GATT Article VIII had also been received from the European Communities, listed in the airgram as document (G/C/W/394), as well as from Canada in document G/C/W/397, Hong Kong, China (G/C/W/398), the United States (G/C/W/400) and Japan (G/C/W/401).