The Chairman stated that, in line with the work programme adopted by Members in the CTG of 22 March 2002, the Council for Trade in Goods would carry out its work on trade facilitation in 2002 in the course of four formal sessions. Following two preceeding meetings earlier this year, held in May and July, the Council was now meeting for a third session which, like the previous ones, had three core agenda items: (1) Article V 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. With regard to the first item, the Chairman recalled Members' agreement that whilst this session would focus on GATT Article V, delegations would also be free to address questions relating to Articles VIII and X. Any delegation wishing to intervene on those articles would therefore be given the opportunity to do so under this agenda item as well. This might be particularly the case with regard to Article VIII, as several delegations had noted at the last session that they had not had time to study some of the presented papers due to their late submission. He noted that some might also wish to revert to Article X. For this reason, the airgram also listed all the previously submitted communications that related to these two provisions. He informed Members that the Council had received communications from delegations on GATT Article V. Submissions relating to this Article had been received from the European Communities (document number G/C/W/422), Korea (document number G/C/W/423) and Canada (document G/C/W/424). In addition, the Secretariat had prepared another one of its background notes, this time addressing Article V, which had been communicated to Members in the airgram as document G/C/W/408. Before opening the floor for comments on agenda item one, he invited the Secretariat and representatives of the European Communities, Korea and Canada to introduce their respective communications.