Memo: Communication from Canada, European Communities, Japan and United States on the accession of LDCs to the WTO as a contribution to The 3rd UN Conference on the Least Developed Countries

In their Communication, Canada, the European Communities, Japan and the United States stated that they were committed to improving and accelerating the negotiating process on accession to the WTO for those least developed countries that had signalled their readiness to undertake a protocol package of commitments to provide market access and adopt and enforce trade rules. They attached priority to four main points as follows: to ensure that the accession process was more effective and less onerous for LDCs and tailored to their specific economic conditions; seek reasonable schedules of commitments on goods and services; make full use of the flexibility foreseen under the WTO Agreement for LDCs; strengthen technical assistance and capacity building to ensure that programmes of assistance respond adequately to the needs of the acceding country.