The Parties to this Agreement,
Recognizing that their relations in the field of trade and economic endeavour should be conducted
with a view to raising standards of living, ensuring full employment and a large and steadily growing
volume of real income and effective demand, and expanding the production of and trade in goods and
services, while allowing for the optimal use of the world's resources in accordance with the objective
of sustainable development, seeking both to protect and preserve the environment and to enhance the
means for doing so in a manner consistent with their respective needs and concerns at different levels
of economic development,
Recognizing further that there is need for positive efforts designed to ensure that developing
countries, and especially the least developed among them, secure a share in the growth in international
trade commensurate with the needs of their economic development,
Being desirous of contributing to these objectives by entering into reciprocal and mutually
advantageous arrangements directed to the substantial reduction of tariffs and other barriers to trade
and to the elimination of discriminatory treatment in international trade relations,
Resolved, therefore, to develop an integrated, more viable and durable multilateral trading system
encompassing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the results of past trade liberalization efforts,
and all of the results of the Uruguay Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations,
Determined to preserve the basic principles and to further the objectives underlying this
multilateral trading system,