Dates Employed at OPCW: 1993-1995
Position: Ambassador of Cuba to the Preparatory Commission and Chairman of Working Group A and of the Expert Group of Programme and Budget

1. The Expert Group on Programme and Budget was established in 1993. The mandate given to the group was to prepare a revised draft of the programme and budget for the Preparatory Commission for a given year, on the basis of an initial proposal prepared by the Technical Secretariat.

I recalled all meetings of this group because none of them were easy. One night, after a very difficult meeting of the group, the Secretariat staff and I started to work at 20.00 in the Preparatory Commission building in the preparation of a revised draft of the programme and budget for 1994. I left my diplomatic car in the street in front of the building, thinking that in three or four hours the work to be done could be concluded.

The initial budget proposal presented by the Secretariat requested over 100 million Dutch guilders and we must reduce it in a little more than 50%. We spent the whole night in the preparation of the revised draft of the budget and the programme trying to reflect all major agreements reached.

When the document was finished and ready to be presented to the Expert Group for its consideration in a meeting scheduled for 9 a.m., one of the security personnel of the building called me urgently because the police was starting the removal of my auto because it was 7 a.m. in the morning. I had the revised version of the budget but I almost lost my car!

2. The history of the meetings within the United Nations system shows that most of them start late, and in some cases very late. The experts meetings within the OPCW Preparatory were not different.

The staff in charge of the meetings of the Expert Group on Programme and Budget was very worried about the late start of almost all of the group meetings.  For this reason, when I assumed the chairmanship of the group, the staff made the following comments within the Secretariat: Now with a Cuban Ambassador chairing the meetings we are going to start our meetings even later than before! Or course, I had something different in my mind because I hate to wait and loss my time!

Before my first meetings as Chairman of the Experts Group, the staff made the following bet. If the chairman starts on time the next two meetings then we should invite him to a lunch in a good Restaurant and express our unconditional support. What happened:  I was invited by the staff many times to a lunch in a good Restaurant! 

The staff gave me full support to carry out my responsibility in the most efficient manner and we worked as a very solid and united team. The meetings of the group started on time and we did not wait for anyone! 

3. The first meetings of the plenary sessions of the Preparatory Commissions were very complicated for many reasons. All plenary sessions of the Preparatory Commission in 1993 were scheduled to start on Monday and finish on Friday afternoon but the first sessions finished on late Friday night of even early Saturday. The meetings of Working Group A were one of the most complicated of the meetings scheduled to be carried out within the plenary sessions of the Preparatory Commission.

In a meeting with the staff they expressed to me their concern about how the meetings were prepared and carried out during 1993. I paid attention very carefully to their opinions and suggestions and indicated to them that we are going to make all necessary efforts to finish on time our next meeting.  Some in the Secretariat were very pessimist that this could happen. The Secretariat started the preparation of the meeting with great detail. The result was the following: The meeting of the Working Group A started on Monday afternoon as scheduled and finished Wednesday afternoon with the report approved by consensus!

The President of the plenary session of the Preparatory Commission congratulated the staff for the outcome of the meeting of Working Group A, allowing the plenary session of the Preparatory Commission to finish, for the first time, Friday afternoon as scheduled.