our view, it follows that where the responding party does not object, explicitly and in a timely manner, to the failure of the complaining party to request or engage in consultations, the responding party may be deemed to have consented to the lack of consultations and, thereby, to have relinquished whatever right to consult it may have had. ”
As found by the Appellate Body, “[i]n assessing the importance of the obligation ‘to indicate whether consultations were held’, we observe that the requirement will be satisfied by the inclusion, in the request for establishment of a panel, of a statement as to whether consultations occurred or not. The purpose of the requirement seems to be primarily informational - to inform the DSB and Members as to whether consultations took place. We also recall that the DSU expressly contemplates that, in certain circumstance

s, a panel can deal with and dispose of the matter referred to it even if no consultations took place. Similarly, the authority of the panel cannot be invalidated by the absence, in the request for establishment of the panel, of an indication ‘whether consultations were held’. Indeed, it would be curious if the requirement in Article 6.2 to inform the DSB whether consultations were held was accorded more importance in the dispute settlement process than the requirement actually to hold those consultations.”10
As a general rule, “it may be true that a request for establishment will be more specific than a request for consultations. However, we consider that Article 6.2 of the DSU is concerned exclusively with a party's request for establishment. Thus, the consistency of a party's request for establishment with Article 6.2 of the DSU should be judged exclusively in light of the specificity of the request for establishment, and not in light of the specificity of the party's earlier request for consultations”. 11

III Identification of “the specific measures at issue”
With regard to the third requirements for requests for establishment of a panel, the question to be discussed below is whether the ordinary meaning of the terms of Art. 6.2 of the DSU, i.e., that “the specific measures at issue” be identified in the panel request, can be met if a “measure” or/and the products affected by such a measure is not explicitly described in the request. In this respect, the Panel Report on Japan-Film (DS44) states that:12
“[…] To fall within the terms of Article 6.2, it seems clear that a ‘measure’ not explicitly described in a panel request must have a clear relationship to a ‘measure’ that is specifically described therein, so that it can be said to be ‘included’ in the specified ‘measure’. In our view, the requirements of Article 6.2 would be met in the case of a ‘measure’ that is subsidiary or so closely related to a ‘measure’ specifically identified, that the responding party can reasonably be found to have received adequate notice of the scope of the claims asserted by the complaining party. The two key elements -- close relationship and notice -- are inter-related: only if a ‘measure’ is subsidiary or closely related to a specifically identified ‘measure’ will notice be adequate. For example, we consider that where a basic framework law dealing with a narrow subject matter that provides for implementing ‘measures’ is specified in a panel request, implementing ‘measures’ might be considered in appropriate circumstances as effe

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