Mr. Chairman,

Allow me at this last session of the Ad-Hoc Working Group on LCA to thank you, on behalf of the Group of 77 and China, for your wise leadership and for the excellent work you have been doing over the past years. Also allow me, at this important juncture, to thank your able Vice-Chair for his leadership also in launching this work in 2008 and for his continuous support during this year. I would like also to thank the Secretariat for their effort and for the timely support they provided for the AWG-LCA over the past two years.

Mr. Chairman,

As we indicated to you at the beginning of this session, the Group supports the bottom-up Party-driven process which we all established and maintained over the past two years. We believe that this approach allows balanced consideration of all building blocs of the Bali Action Plan and enables all Parties to participate and bring in their interests and concerns regarding the expected outcome of Copenhagen.

Allow me also at this last session to tremendously thank all the Co-Chairs and the Facilitator who helped you in conducting this business for their excellent work and their tireless efforts to try to bring Parties together and advance the work and the text that is expected to form the agreed outcome in a transparent and bottom-up approach. It is no doubt this is the only way that could led us to a fair and agreed outcome.

Mr. Chairman,

We understand that the remaining time in this session may not enable Parties to complete the excellent work in the same manner, and we understand that there is a great sense of urgency and mounting pressure to reach an agreement in Copenhagen. I would like to assure all parties that our Group is highly committed to make this happen. However, we have serious concern regarding the organization of work at this session and how the result of our ongoing work over the past two years will be considered and incorporated in the outcome of this conference.

Mr. Chairman,

We do need an assurance that this work will be the basis for any agreement reached in Copenhagen.

I thank you.