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300 Travaux préparatoires: United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime“Option 2“The provisions of the present Convention shall prevail over those of other UnitedNations conventions dealing with the same matters.”Second session: 8-12 March 1999Notes by the Secretariat5. Delegations based their comments on the text of article 24 of the revised draftconvention contained in document A/AC.254/4/Rev.1, which was the same as that containedin document A/AC.254/4.Rolling text (A/AC.254/4/Rev.2)“Option 1“Article 24“Relation with other conventions 6“This Convention shall not prejudice the application of other United Nations conventionson criminal matters.“Option 2“The provisions of the present Convention shall prevail over those of other UnitedNations conventions dealing with the same matters. 7“Option 3“No provision of this Convention shall be construed as preventing the StatesParties from engaging in mutual cooperation within the framework of other internationalagreements, whether bilateral or multilateral, currently in force or concludedin the future, or pursuant to any other applicable arrangement or practice.“Option 4“1. The provisions of this Convention that relate to international cooperationwill in no way affect the application of broader provisions of bilateral or multilateral6The discussion on article 24 at the second session of the Ad Hoc Committee focused on options 1 and 2 of the articleas presented in the revised draft convention (A/AC.254/4/Rev.1). Some delegations suggested that the article should dealnot only with the relation between the present convention and other United Nations conventions, but also with its relationto bilateral and multilateral treaties and arrangements in general. It was also suggested that the article should specify therelation between protocols to the present convention and other international treaties and arrangements. A number of delegationsexpressed a preference for option 1 on the ground that States parties to existing bilateral and multilateral instrumentsoften assumed obligations that went beyond those to be contained in the present convention and that States parties shouldcontinue to respect those obligations. Other delegations expressed a preference for option 2 on the ground that applying anumber of agreements and conventions could lead to conflict. It was also suggested by one delegation that the issue ofwhich convention would prevail could depend on the individual issue at hand. Other delegations suggested that any optionunder this article would have to be enriched and a differentiation would have to be made between the measures addressed.The Ad Hoc Committee agreed that the exchange of views on the article at its second session was only preliminary, sinceno decision should be made on the content of the article until the earlier, substantive articles of the convention had beendiscussed. A number of additional proposals were made for the formulation of article 24 and the Ad Hoc Committee decidedthat those proposals should be included as new options 3 and 4.7One delegation noted that it could accept option 2 as the working text if the words “the same matters” were to bereplaced with the words “organized crime”.