The World Heritage Committee,
1. Thanking the Drafting Group and all other experts, representatives of States Parties to the World Heritage Convention, the Advisory Bodies and the World Heritage Centre for work accomplished to date on the revision of the Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention;
2. Taking note of the Report of the March 2002 Drafting Group on the Revision of the Operational Guidelines presented as document WHC-03/6 EXT.COM/INF.5A;
3. Considering that the 3rd Draft Revised Operational Guidelines presented in document WHC-03/6 EXT.COM/INF.5B represents a substantial effort, but that further work is required to reflect the recent decisions of the Committee (in particular Decisions 6 EXT.COM 3 and 6 EXT.COM 4 and 6 EXT.COM 7) and to make them more userfriendly;
4. Recalling the decision of the 25th session of the Committee to allocate US $ 50,000 from the World Heritage Fund in 2003 for the revision of the Operational Guidelines and the subsequent decision 26 COM 24.2 (paragraph 3) to reduce this amount to US $ 22,000;
5. Taking into account decision 6 EXT COM 5.2 relating to the preparation of a volume of the Basic Texts of the Convention;
6. Requests the World Heritage Centre, working in collaboration with the Advisory Bodies, to carry out the tasks itemized below in the Technical Annex in order to present revised user-friendly Operational Guidelines to the World Heritage Committee for adoption at its 27th session (Suzhou, China 29 June-5 July 2003);
7. Decides to include an item on the adoption of the revised Operational Guidelines on the agenda of the 27th session of the Committee (Suzhou, China 29 June-5 July 2003).