Assembly wants a streamlined Council by 1992.

• Position: UN Economic and Social Council

The Economic and Social Council will have a new and streamlined work programme starting in 1992. The Council will also hold one substantive annual session instead of two; a four-day ministerial meeting will open each session.

At its resumed forty-fifth session, the General Assembly May on 13 May asked the Council to hammer out a leaner annual agenda at an organizational session to be held in February 1992.

Resolution 45/264 was adopted by consensus. The draft was originally sponsored by Fiji, whose representative Winston Thompson chaired several informal consultations.

Mr. Thompson told the Assembly that the draft resulted from weeks of arduous work". The final text drew heavily on a "Group of 77" developing countries proposal (A/45/991), he explained, but also reflected "the combined efforts of a wide spectrum of Member States", citing proposals by the European Community (A/45/999) and the Nordic countries (A/45/1001), and informal papers submitted by Japan and Australia.

The Assembly also had before it a report by the Secretary-General (A/45/714).

Starting in 1992, the Council's main or substantive session will convene for four to five weeks between May and July, alternating each year between New York and Geneva.

The session will be organized in four consecutive segments: highlevel policy making with ministerial participation; coordination; operational activities; and committee work.

The traditional "General debate"the open-ended, often meandering speech-making at the beginning of each session-will be abolished. Instead, the ministers and agency heads attending the high-level segment" will engage in a tightly-focused discussion on one or more major economic and/or social policy issues. They are to debate issues...