The World Heritage Committee adopted a draft decision on the "Cairns Decision" on Monday evening, deciding to examine up to two complete world heritage nominations per state party each year starting from 2006.

One precondition is that at least one of such nominations concerns a natural property, sources close to the committee told Xinhua.

The committee also decided to set at 45 annual limit on the total number of nominations it will review, inclusive of nominations deferred and referred by previous session of the

committee, extensions, transboundary nominations and nominations submitted on an emergency basis, sources said.

The "Cairns Decision" was a suite of decisions adopted in 2000 at the 24th Session of the World Heritage Committee with a purpose to improve the representativity of the World Heritage List and managing the workload of the committee, advisory bodies, and the World Heritage Center.

The "Cairns Decision" established two separate limits on the number of nominations to be examined each year, including one new nomination per state party each year and an annual limit of 30 new nominations it would review annually.

Source: Xinhua