The president opened the meeting, welcoming members and interested guests. There were 29 in attendance, including at least 25 members of the commission. The agenda as previously posted on the commission's WWW site was adopted. The members stood for a moment of silence in honor of the six esteemed members of the commission who had died: M. P. Candy 04/11/94, R.A. Lyttleton 16/05/95, R. Smoluchowski 12/01/96, A. Mrkos 29/05/96, J. Rahe 18/06/97, E. Shoemaker 18/07/97, and V. Vanysek 27/07/97. The commission then elected new members K. Muinonen (Finland), S. Price (USA), and J. Watanabe (Japan). Furthermore, the following IAU membership nominees were elected to the commission pending their confirmation as IAU members at the second session of the General Assembly: J.-P. Barriot (France), T. Bonev (Bulgaria), A. Fitzsimmons (United Kingdom), D. Foryta (Brazil), S. Ibadov (Tajikistan), Y. Ma (PR China), P. Magnusson (Sweden), F. Marzari (Italy), A. Nakamura (Japan), P. Rousselot (France), A. S. Sharma (USA), and J. Zhu (PR China).