12. In accordance with the conclusions of the Bureau at its 13th session and taking account of the above-mentioned resolution, the Committee decided to allocate under the 1990 budget a sum of $20,000 to cover the costs of the participation at the Bureau and Committee sessions of specialists in cultural and natural heritage conservation representing the States Members of the Committee which appear on the United Nations List of Least Developed Countries (LDCs). For 1990, this measure would apply to two States Members of the Committee: the United Republic of Tanzania and Yemen Arab Republic.

13. In the discussions on this question, the Committee stressed the fact that such an allocation should be given exclusively for national experts or managers of sites inscribed on the World Heritage List.

14. Having being mandated by the Committee, the Bureau considered that it would be difficult to apply rigid mechanisms for the election of Committee members so as to ensure an appropriate balance between an equitable representation of the geographical regions and of the cultural areas. The Bureau, in addition, requested the Secretariat to submit proposals for guidelines at its next session which the Committee could submit for consideration to the General Assembly for the next elections.

41. The question of thematic studies was again raised, several delegates having pointed out the interdependence of these studies and the global study. The work undertaken through these two initiatives could be mutually reinforcing and could lead to the presentation of an overall policy for implementing the World Heritage Convention at the special session of the Committee which will commemorate the twentieth anniversary of its adoption. In particular, a study on mixed sites and rural landscapes should be undertaken as a priority, according to several delegates (Canada, France, Greece, Italy and Mexico) who offered to participate in a working group that might be created for this purpose. In this respect, the representative of Italy stressed that in countries of the Old World, natural properties have always been strongly modified by man and that it was necessary to take this human presence into account when considering the integrity of these properties.

42. The Committee took note with satisfaction of a delegate's offer to place an expert from the archeological service of his country at the disposal of the Secretariat to help the work of the global study.

43. The Committee took note of document SC-89/CONF.004/INF.4 describing the progress made in drawing up a global indicative list of geological and fossil sites which have the potential to meet natural World Heritage criteria (i) and (ii). The Committee was glad to learn that the Secretariat had contacted Unesco's International Geological Correlation Programme (IGCP) and the International Union for the Geological Sciences (IUGS) and had engaged a high level consultant who had drawn up a preliminary indicative list. This preliminary list was being circulated to more than 150 experts in the field of geology around the world and would be finalized by the IGCP and IUGS in co-operation with IUCN in February 1990. The Committee welcomed the co-operation of the geological scientists' community in this endeavour and noted that the global indicative list would be presented to the Bureau at its 14th session.