COPENHAGEN – All over Europe, budgets are being pared as anew age of austerity takes hold.

A number of delegations concurred that the agenda should be pared down considerably, since too many issues had been addressed during the second session.

Mr. Mazzoni (Italy) expressed support for the thrust of the Singapore proposal but suggested that the wording should be pared down and clarified.

And soon all Paree will be singing to you

Consistent with the phase-out process, Mission headquarters will be pared down, relocated and restructured, beginning in late 2003, to permit savings and reflect lower staffing levels, while striving to retain sufficient strength to cover priorities.

It's just that Catherine tends to disappoint. She only wants to be a pare when it's convenient.

In that case, other alternative and appropriate conversion rates, including PAREs could be employed.

With regard to the possibility of developing systematic criteria for deciding when MERs should be replaced with PAREs, he took the view that PAREs should be applied only in specific cases involving the correction of other indexes.

However, there was perhaps merit in the view that more systematic criteria for the use of PAREs should be developed.

The distortion should be corrected by using PAREs for the conversion of the data instead of MERs.