Internet Governance Forum Consultations Wednesday 23 May 2007 10:00 a.m.


Note: The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the
Open Consultations.  Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be
incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It
is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should
not be treated as an authoritative record.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Good morning.  Welcome to Geneva.  And I thought I would
begin first by explaining a little the nature and purpose of this meeting today.
Let me begin first by saying that when we met last, in February, there was a
certain amount of uncertainty because there was a change in New York, a new
Secretary-General had come in.  And it was more of what we had done in February
was more like a stock-taking of what we had done in Athens. I just wanted to
inform that you the new Secretary-General has asked me to continue as the
special advisor on this matter until the end of this year.  And it's in that
capacity, in my capacity as a special advisor on Internet that I'm taking this
meeting for an open consultation on this issue. The other part of it was the
Advisory Group.  Again, there has been a process of -- how shall I say? --
reshuffling going on in New York which has delayed matters.  My understanding is
that it is in the final stages.  And I don't know when, at what point, at what
hour, the decisions will be taken.  But it's in the works. What I wanted to
stress is that the primary purpose of this consultation is to advise the
secretary-general.  Because, as you recollect from -- in the Tunis outcome, it
is the Secretary-General who has been authorized to convene the meeting of the
Internet Governance Forum.  And our purpose, my principal responsibility, is to
advise him on the convening of this meeting, from basic logistical issues to the
broad structure. It is not --  We are not advising him on substantive issues. 
This is where the -- all of those who participate in the IGF have to contribute.
 What we are really advising the Secretary-General on is what he is responsible
for, which is the convening of the meeting. This is my job.  This is the job
also of the Advisory Group. I also wanted to say that the discussions with our
Brazilian hosts have been progressing.  A team from the United Nations
secretariat visited Brazil in March and will be visiting Brazil again next week.
 So as far as the organizational and logistical arrangements are concerned, they
are well in hand and there is no delay of our conclusion on that front. We were
given a very good exposition last time of the arrangements which are being made.
 All of those arrangements stand.  And on the logistical and organizational
side, things are very well in hand. What I think we can do here today which
would be most useful would be to really try and start talking, and, if possible,
see whether we can arrive at some understanding on how the meeting in Brazil
should be organized, structured, what the themes could be. In order to do that,
Markus, the secretariat, headed by Markus Kummer, had put out an -- there is a
-- I don't have a cell phone.  Somebody's cell phone is ringing. Oh, there's
something in the back.  Sorry. The -- this is ITU, after all, so I would expect
phones to ring all around. [ Laughter ]


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  The --  I think Markus Kummer had put out an initial set of
ideas on the organization of the meeting.  On the basis of that, a lot of people
have sent in comments.  And the -- some synthesis of those comments has also
been prepared. And I thought we should focus our attention initially on this
aspect. What I was going to suggest is that I will request Markus to quickly
walk us through what had been put up on the Web site.  After that, we have a
general discussion.  And at the end of the morning, I will try and list some of
the key issues on which there appear to be differences of views, and we could
then spend a little more time in the afternoon focusing on those areas where
there are differences, to see what the range of views is. As I said, my job and
purpose is -- at the end of the day, is really to advise the Secretary-General
on what the sense and sentiment of the people who are most involved in this
meeting is with regard to structure, organization, and themes.  And that is the
purpose. So if we agree, I would begin first by just asking Markus to walk us
through what had been put out and what -- the comments that he has received, and
after that just open the floor for general remarks and comments on this issue. 
Thank you. Is that fine? Markus.


>>SECRETARY KUMMER:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  Good morning.  Let me say a few
things -- is it -- Oh, yes.  Sorry.  Good morning, everybody.  Let me start by
making a few remarks on the logistics.  As always, we have our faithful scribes
with us, who take down every word that is being said in this room.  And we also
made provisions for remote participation.  We have two web casts here.  One of
them will be focusing on the transcription so that remote participants should be
able to read what is being said in this room.  And the other camera will just
focus on the room and give participants who log in from the outside a flavor of
the meeting. We also have made provisions so that remote participants can send
in questions and intervention via e-mail.  There are two monitors there.  Adam
Peake and Kieren McCarthy will take any questions and will interact with remote
participants. We did send out a draft program outline for the Rio meeting about
a month ago.  And that was very much based on the input we had received during
the consultations and the preparatory process of that stock-taking of Athens in
February. Clearly, the aim would not be a repetition of the first meeting, but
the aim would be to have something that is a little bit more, that is, Athens
plus. The general feeling in February was that the structure for the Athens
meeting had actually worked well, and there was a general sense that the basic
meeting structure should be retained. There was a sense that best practices
should be given more prominent space throughout the meeting, through the
thematic meetings, but also maybe in separate meetings.  We took up some
suggestions that were made, and, in particular, two proposals that were made are
a feature in this draft program outline.  One of them would be to offer all
major organizations dealing with Internet governance issues, to give them a
space where they can hold open forums and report on their activities and engage
with participants in a discussion on their activities. And the second proposal
for innovation would be to offer a space for holding best practices, forums that
would allow governments and all stakeholders to present best practices in an
area related to Internet governance and also to discuss success stories. The
original suggestion was to give national, to give governments a space where they
could be more actively engaged, so we could imagine that this would be a space
where national governments would present their Internet policy, and we could
learn from best practices in this area. As regard the meeting types, we suggest
sticking to the format of main sessions and workshops in parallel, and other
meetings that will be held in parallel. Clearly, everybody, every -- virtually
every feedback we received said the main sessions should be shorter and snappier
and the panels should be smaller in size.  And that is what we propose, that the
main session should be of only two hours' duration and the panels should be not
more than four or six people. Maybe not clear to everybody, maybe it was not
well explained, I received many questions on the nature of the workshop.  We
proposed two different type of workshops, what we called thematic workshops and
the open workshops.  The open workshops would be very much what we had in
Athens, where any interested stakeholder group could propose holding a workshop
on any issue related to Internet governance, whereas the thematic workshops
would be more closely linked to the main session. This is one of the criticisms
that was made at the -- after the Athens meeting, that the relationship between
the workshops and the main sessions was not always that clear. What we propose
here is to have workshops dealing with subthemes under the main theme. We also
propose that the workshops will be held prior to the main themes, so that they
would feed into the main session.  And as an organizational principle, we tried
to schedule them in a way that, on any given theme, there will be no overlap,
that is, that there will be no meeting on openness in parallel, in competition,
with another meeting on the same subject.  The same, of course, goes for the
other themes. Obviously, one of the successes of Athens was the dynamic
coalitions that emerged.  And we proposed giving a space for dynamic coalition
where they can develop further their activities and where they can also report
back to the main session. And I mentioned already the best practice forums and
the open forums for the Internet organizations. And in addition, we picked up an
idea that was first used by the ITU in an intergovernmental context, that was to
have -- I think the ITU called it speed exchanges.  We call it here "speed
dialogue."  Innovative format which was taken from the American Bar Association.
 They experimented with it.  And we have a representative of the American Bar
Association in this room who may give his explanation. But this is not supposed
to be a decision-making, preparation session, as it was used by some
organizations.  I noticed it created some confusion in the various discussions. 
This is merely supposed to be a warmup to the main session, a kind of open-ended
preparatory session for the main session. The advantage of this kind of more
intimate session is that it allows people to take the floor who might feel a bit
shy to take the floor in a main plenary session. And last, but not least, we
will offer allocated meeting rooms to whoever wants to have a meeting.  I will
not go through the various facilities.  But, basically, the schedule, the draft
schedule, and the program outline we proposed is tailor-made to the facilities
the Brazilian hosts are offering to us, which are excellent meeting facilities.
And we think that we need to provide for enough meetings in parallel to the main
session because we expect even bigger attendance than we had in Athens and we
cannot fit them all all the time in the same meeting hall. We also made some
suggestions for possible content for the main sessions.  And these suggestions
were not invented by the secretariat, but they were taken from the summary we
had of the Athens meeting. And we also, to conclude, we said we could hold
another round of open consultations in September, and talking to various people,
I feel they, on the whole, see the necessity to do that.  We have already
reserved facilities. We don't have much flexibility, as the U.N. will be very
busy this fall.  But there is a slot in the first week of September where we
could hold other meetings. Now, based on this draft program outline, we had
contributions, reactions to it.  And on the whole, I'm pleased to note that the
reactions were rather positive. There were, of course, a few dissenting voices. 
And there were also contributions that, again, raised the more fundamental
questions related to the role, the mandate, and the functioning of the IGF. With
regard to the content, there was, again -- clearly, some contributions pointed
out the need to address critical Internet resources and also called for a kind
of meta discussion on the global architecture, the global framework. I will not
go through the detail of the various themes.  But it was also questioned whether
the themes we had in Athens should be cast in stone or whether we should not
have different themes, should handle them with a certain flexibility. And, well,
with regards to the participation logistics, the comments were made that it
would be important to start registration early and so on.  And I can assure
people that we will do so. It may be worth mentioning that, with regard to
content, there was a strong push for dealing with children, protection of
children, and the need children have, and also the needs of disadvantaged
communities.  There were several contributors that made that remark. So the
program, I think, we have produced provides what we would see as a possible
middle grounds on Athens, but it opens up also for dealing with critical
Internet resources. In particular, what we suggest the voting session to
emerging issues maybe in a more structured way than we had in Athens.  And we
also propose a session that will be -- we call it topical issues, but maybe the
better word would have been to call it a case study, on something that was of
interest with regard to Internet governance.  The paper mentions the denial of
service attack on root servers, which could be an interesting case study to
discuss how the existing mechanisms work, how the attacks were handled, how the
system withstood these attacks, what are the lessons learned, what could be
improved, and so on.  But, of course, there are other themes that may be of
interest.  But that is one of the proposals we think could be of interest to
participants. I think I will stop at this stage.  And, of course, I'm happy to
explain if there are any questions, if the proposals were not clear enough. 
Thank you.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  The floor is now open. El Salvador.  Germany, Brazil.  China.
 I've got four.  I'll take four at a time.  Okay.


>>EL SALVADOR:  Thank you, Chairman. The Latin American and Caribbean group,
GRULAC, would first of all like to thank you and the secretariat for the draft
program and schedule which were published on the official Web site of the forum.
GRULAC has made a study of the mandate of the Internet Governance Forum,
henceforth referred to as a forum, contained in paragraph 72 of the Tunis Agenda
for the information society, again, the results obtained at the first forum,
held in Athens, and the drafts prepared for the second forum in Rio of this
year, which we would like to share with you. Before going into details, please
allow me to highlight the fact that GRULAC believes that the forum must fulfill
the entire mandate which was handed to us by our heads of state and government
to take each subparagraph of paragraph 72, GRULAC would like to state the
following.  With regard to debating issues, public policy issues relating to key
elements of Internet governance, with the aim of contributing to sustainability,
solidity, security, stability, and Internet development, the forum has made
progress. We might even consider that all discussions contribute to this
subparagraph.  We should mention that subparagraph A will be relevant throughout
the rest of the process.  And we need to include all the key elements relating
to Internet governance, and we know that this is a long list. With regard to
facilitating the dialogue between bodies which deal with cross-cutting and
Internet-related international public policies and debating issues which are not
included in the mandate of existing bodies, the open fora for all the main
organizations which deal with the issues relating to the Internet for this year
could be a first step in the right direction.  GRULAC would invite these
organizations to take advantage of this space in Rio to increase their
visibility, and as an action that would contribute to fulfilling the governance
principles reflected in paragraphs 29 to 31 of the Tunis Agenda for the
information society. The relevant results of these sessions could be fed into
the topical session and/or the year-in-review session in addition to being dealt
with in the reporting-back sessions. As far as facilitating communication with
the appropriate intergovernmental organizations and other competent institutions
are concerned, we would like to say that the work and results of dynamic
coalitions can contribute to the construction of such interfaces. With regard to
facilitating the exchange of information and best practices and, thus, fully
taking advantage of the competence of academic, scientific, and technical
communities, the fora of best practices proposed by the second forum could be
very important with regard to advising all stakeholders suggesting solutions and
means for the Internet to be more rapidly available and to be available to a
greater number of persons in developing countries. In Athens, the forum dealt
with this issue, particularly with regard to the national dimension, pointing
out the benefits of competence.  But there is need for this to be dealt with in
more -- more in depth at the regional and international levels. With regard to
strengthening and improving the participation of stakeholders, in the current
and the future Internet governance mechanisms, in particular, in developing
countries, GRULAC believes that the forum must do everything possible to involve
the current entities which deal with Internet governance mechanisms to take
advantage of the space offered by the forum to increase their visibility and the
level of awareness, particularly among the different stakeholders of developing
countries.  This in order to increase the participation of these countries in
such mechanisms. Again, open fora proposed for Rio as well as the topical
session or the year-in-review session could be useful as far as steps to this
end.  GRULAC believes that this topic is as important as the four large topics,
although for different reasons, and should be dealt with as such by the forum.
With regard to identifying immersion issues and to bring this to the attention
of competent bodies and the public in general and to formulate recommendations,
the year-in-review session and the topical session could be an answer that would
guide the forum on future actions in order to adequately tackle this issue. With
regard to contributing to the capacity building in relation to Internet
governance for developing countries and taking advantage of local knowledge and
competences, the first step would be to increase awareness in most developing
countries, especially at the decision-making level. This would necessarily be
based on the premise that all the different aspects of the mandates of the forum
should be raised at that decision-making level. With regard to contributing to
capacity building for Internet governance in developing countries, taking
advantage, as much as possible, of local knowledge and competencies and
discussing issues relating to critical Internet resources, among other things. 
The forum did not touch on this issue in Athens and it is not considered in the
drafts for the Rio meeting. As we said before, as far as GRULAC is concerned,
topics relate to go critical Internet resources and the internalization of
Internet governance principles are as important as access, openness, security,
and diversity, and must be treated equally, although the reasons for their level
of importance are different. The ideal case would be to have a fifth issue
referring to Internet governance of critical resources and the attendant
principles. GRULAC, although we understand the limitations of time and space
that the forum necessarily has, would like to ask and urge all the stakeholders
and the Secretariat to come up with a satisfactory solution to this problem.
With regard to finding solutions to the problems arising from the correct or
incorrect use of the Internet which are of particular interest for the ordinary
user, GRULAC recognizes the justified emphasis made by the advisory group on the
fulfillment of the subparagraph and understands that it will continue to be
important if we want to have an Information Society that is inclusive and people
based. With regard to publishing its minutes, the GRULAC recognizes the efforts
of the forum, the Secretariat in complying with this. After having presented our
current study on the fulfillment of the forum's mandate, GRULAC would like to
draw attention to the need for balanced geographical representation contained in
paragraph 78 and others of the Tunis Agenda for the information society in order
to increase the participation of all stakeholders of developing countries. In
Athens, the representation of our region stood at 5%. We, therefore, need to
actively seek better geographical balance as far as participation is concerned,
which will not only facilitate the successful carrying out of our work in forum
and later fora, but also the legitimacy of the Internet Governance Forum. Allow
me, before ending, to open a small parentheses to refer to the process of
improved cooperation, which was requested of the secretary-general in paragraph
71 of the Tunis Agenda.  You informed us at the last open consultations that you
had presented your report to the secretary-general and that you were awaiting
his decisions with regard to the following, the next steps. GRULAC would like to
stress the need to have feedback on the status of this process. We take note
that the Secretariat has planned for possible consultations for September.  In
case this is possible or necessary, we would need to refine the program and
calendar of work for the second forum. We would invite all stakeholders to carry
out similar studies so that our collective knowledge would have a clear view of
what we have achieved so far, and the challenges that remain for us to take up.
I thank you, sir.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  I thank you very much for that very thorough and very
thoughtful contribution. I would strongly urge people to, if possible, to
comment on suggestions which have come from others, also, so that I get a sense
of where people are. And the first contribution, we are very fortunate, has gone
through very systematically all the terms of reference of IGF and have made an
evaluation of where we are. So I urge people to comment, also, as to whether
they agree with that, whether they feel the same and so on, because that will
help us to move towards some form of what we will do with this forum. I would
also request people, if they have any written contribution -- I know we have the
transcript, but it will also help if the written contribution is there for
somebody like me, who has lost the habit of reading long transcripts now, and
would welcome something like this, which gives me a sense of where people are.
Next we have Germany and after that Brazil, China and Iran.


>>GERMANY:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  Mr. Chairman, I am speaking on behalf of
the European Union.  The European Union would like to thank you for convening
the present consultations.  We would like to commend the Secretariat for
preparing the draft program outline for the second meeting of the IGF. We
welcome the proposed concept that builds on the format of the IGF in Athens and
at the same time incorporates the innovative ideas expressed in the course of
the last consultations in February here in Geneva. For us, it is in particular
important that the multistakeholder approach be the guiding principles. Mr.
Chairman, we equally appreciate that the content of the draft program outline
reflects the continuation of the themes brought up in the first IGF in Athens. 
In particular, with regard to security and openness, as well as the development
orientation of the forum which we find of high importance. The European Union is
fully committed to continue cooperation with all stakeholders.  A number of its
member states have embarked on active participation in dynamic coalitions.  It
is therefore particularly welcome that a space for those coalitions is also
foreseen in the draft program outline. The European union, therefore, supports
the proposed concept for a program outline of the second IGF in Rio.  It will
allow us to build on the success achieved in the first IGF in Athens. Mr.
Chairman, the European Union will continue to support the IGF.  It is a
well-suited forum for public policy dialogue with all stakeholders involved. The
success already achieved in Athens is a good example for this. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Thank you. Brazil.


>>BRAZIL:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Allow may to speak on behalf of the
governments of Brazil and Argentina. First, I'd like to say that we fully
support the statement that has been just delivered by El Salvador on behalf of
GRULAC. Our governments are committed to the full implementation in all fora of
the results of the World Summit on the Information Society.  The following WSIS
principles provide the framework to guide our debate on Internet governance.
First, the Internet has evolved into a global facility available to the public
and its governance should constitute a core issue of the Information Society
agenda. Second, the international management of the Internet should be
multilateral, transparent and democratic, with the full involvement of
governments, the private sector, civil society, and international organizations.
Third, the Internet governance is an essential element for a people-centered,
inclusive, development-oriented and nondiscriminatory information Society.
Fourth, policy authority for Internet-related public policy issues is the
sovereign right of states.  They have rights and responsibilities for
international Internet-related public policy issues. And fifth, all governments
should have an equal role and responsibility for international Internet
governance and for ensuring the stability, security, and continuity of the
Internet. The governments of Brazil and Argentina consider essential that the
mandate established by the Tunis Agenda regarding participation, scope, thematic
agenda, and possible results expected from the IGF be fully observed. No subject
that may be relevant to Internet governance show a priori be excluded from the
agenda. The participation of representatives from the developing world in the
first IGF meeting was very limited.  Only 5% of the participants came from Latin
America and the Caribbean. It is expected that its second edition in Rio favors
the involvement of representatives from developing countries and the region. We
would like to recall that the mandate of the forum provides for balanced
regional participation, paragraph 78 of the Tunis Agenda. With a view to
contributing for the preparatory process for the Rio meeting, we offer the
following suggestions: We support the creation of a mechanism that is able to
revert the problem of underrepresentation of the developing world.  As
established by paragraph 78 of the Tunis Agenda, the secretary-general of the
United Nations should take balanced regional representation into account in the
convening of the IGF.  Balanced regional representation is essential for the
legitimacy of possible recommendations as provided by the IGF mandate. We invite
the international telecommunications union and the Internet Corporation for
Assigned Names and Numbers, ICANN, to lead the discussion on topical issues
related to Internet governance. The ICANN President's Strategy Committee report
and the ITU resolution 102 could be a good starting point for discussions. The
basis for introducing such topical issues is the Tunis Agenda, paragraph 72j,
which provides that IGF shall, inter alia, debate issues regarding the
management of critical Internet resources, as well as paragraph 72b which asks
the IGF for facilitating discourse between parties dealing with different
cross-cutting international public policies regarding the Internet and discuss
issues that do not fall within the scope of any existing body. We also support
that time be allocated to exchange good practices of Internet management at
national level. As regards the structure of the IGF, we are in favor of the
installation of a multistakeholder bureau office outlined by paragraph 78b of
the Tunis Agenda. It is understandable, considering the open nature of the IGF,
that the composition of a bureau poses challenges to the traditional practices
within the United Nations. It would be useful to promote the debate on how to
better use the existing structure to the preparatory phase in support to the
conduct of work during the event, as well as in the intersessional period. As
for the main thematic sessions, the four main topics that structured the debates
in the first IGF in Athens could be maintained. We should consider streamlining
the agenda of each cluster so as to focus the debates on concrete and specific
issues. Among concrete issues that could be addressed in Rio we suggest, one,
for the access cluster, a discussion on international interconnection costs. 
Two, for openness, a discussion on fundamental rights in the Internet, as well
as issues related to interoperable platforms and open standards, including free
and open source software. Three, for security, cooperation on the efficient
application of national law and international treaties related to the use of the
Internet.  In particular, in criminal matters. And for the diversity cluster,
protection and promotion of knowledge sharing and local content production,
including content produced with noncommercial purposes. The concept of network
neutrality would also fit on this cluster, but it could also be considered as an
emerging issue. Mr. Chairman, the governments of Brazil and Argentina consider
that the enhanced cooperation process is also essential to enable governments on
an equal footing to exercise their roles in formulating global public policies
related to Internet governance.  We therefore urge the United Nations
Secretariat to take action on this matter in accordance to the Tunis mandate.
The process of enhanced cooperation is inseparable from the context of global
Internet governance, and is part of the balance of commitments achieved by the
world summit. Thank you.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Thank you very much. I have now China followed by Iran,
followed by Saudi Arabia.


>>CHINA:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  Thank you for convening this consultation. 
The Chinese government attaches great importance to this IGF process.  And we
have the following points to make. First, we believe that the second IGF meeting
should be an expansion of the previous one, the Athens meeting.  And we are glad
to hear that Mr. Kummer also believes it should be Athens plus.  So as far as
the themes for the second meeting is concerned, we believe that some addition
can be recommended, and we think that the discussion of the essence were very
useful.  Still, there are some critical issues that were missing at the meeting.
For instance, issues like the DNS root servers and IP address.  These are the
critical issues, critical to the security of the global Internet.  And actually,
it is these issues which were not adequately discussed during the Tunis meeting
that an IGF was recommended in the first place. So we find it, on the first hand
-- on the one hand, that the discussion of the essence were quite useful, but on
the other hand, we find it regrettable that these critical issues were not
thoroughly discussed, and we hope that at the second IGF meeting this can be
rectified and that is the reason why we, China, has suggested an addition to the
themes of this meeting. So in addition to the four themes that were proposed by
the Secretariat, we would like to add the fifth theme, which is the -- which we
entitled framework.  And under this theme, we hope that the issues of the IP
address and the DNS root servers can be discussed. And we are glad to hear that
this idea was also mentioned by some of the previous speakers.  So we support
their statement. And we are also glad to see that China's comments, which we
submitted some time ago, have been incorporated into the document prepared by
the Secretariat, so I will not go into the details of the Chinese proposals. But
let me reiterate that we strongly recommend that the second meeting of IGF
should discuss the issues of DNS, root servers, and IP address.  And we hope
that some sort of decision can be taken during this meeting to incorporate that
theme into the draft program. Thank you.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Thank you. I have Iran and then Saudi Arabia, and then Chile.
 And then Russian Federation.


>>IRAN:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  It's always good to see you up there,
steering the work of these open consultations and any other meeting. And thanks
to you, Mr. Chairman, for arranging another round of open consultations which
really enables us to express ourselves in terms of our interests and also
concern, our concerns. I appreciate also Markus and his team for the draft
program of work which really helps us to focus on the issue. Mr. Chairman, I'll
try to focus more on the issue of themes and briefly -- a brief note on the
structure. Let me first indicate that we do not look at the IGF in a sort of
ambitious manner.  We judge IGF within its own context, and we expect from IGF
the way it should be expected. And we invest, at the same time, a great part of
our attention to the enhanced cooperation mechanism.  Supposed to be there by
the end of the first quarter of 2006. I think we are mature and patient enough
to wait, still, for it.  But as said by Brazil, that is a serious part of the
agenda of the Information Society and the balance which was established in
Tunis. So we will still wait but encourage and urge the secretary-general to
embark upon initiating or starting the process. We have taken note of the draft
proposed program of work with great interest.  We are cognizant of the fact that
the same issues are considered for the focus of the work of the Rio meeting, the
same topics as discussed in Athens. This is where paragraph 72 of the Tunis
document, Tunis Agenda for Action, provides us with a list of items within the
mandate of IGF; indeed, of major concern for many of us.  Many of those items
are a matter of major concern for many of us within this room and out there. As
we recall, a number of stakeholders during the previous consultations proposed a
multi-year program of work to be established in order to enable us to avoid the
controversies that we are having around the themes for each meeting of the IGF.
And that was to conduct open -- that the proposal of establishing a multi-year
program was in a way helping us in these open consultations to do our job in
more efficient manner to avoid controversies. It is interesting for us to note
the conclusion that if we establish a multi-year program, we would be behind
technology called progress and that cannot be accommodated within such a
framework.  This is why among the issues for the consideration of the IGF in
paragraph 72 of the Tunis Agenda for Action we have a theme on emerging issues
which does not contradict with establishing the multi-year program of work at
all, to our mind. We are of the firm conviction that issues of major concern to
all stakeholders should be addressed in a fair and equitable manner.  This does
not mean that we are against discussing the four themes of the Athens meeting to
be elaborated in further details in Rio.  To us, among the meetings in Rio, a
meeting can be allocated to stock taking of the Athens elaborations on the four
themes, and coming up with a sort of conclusion to be included in the report.
Yet the second IGF should be able to touch upon other issues of concerns to all
stakeholders. We wish to clarify, like many others, the necessity of addressing
public policy issues related to the key elements of the Internet governance, as
well as discussing inter alia issues related to critical Internet resources as
stipulated already in paragraph 72 of the Tunis Agenda. There is no point to
avoid that.  And in fact, the question is, how long we want to avoid discussing
those issues. According to paragraph 13a of the WGIG report, which to our mind
is the outcome of a full-fledged multistakeholder process, and we have been part
of it, and you chaired the meeting, Mr. Chairman, so ably, and I suppose all
stakeholders shared its conclusions that issues relating to infrastructure and
the management of critical Internet resources, including administration of the
domain name system, Internet protocol addresses, administration of the root
server system, technical standards, peering and interconnection,
telecommunication infrastructure, including innovative and convergent
technologies as well as multilingualization are among those very important and
pertinent public policy issues that should be touched upon. As said, the WGIG
report is not a report imposed by governments. It is a report of a
multistakeholder process, with open consultations involved, and we all remember
that very well. On cross-cutting issues for the Rio meeting, again according to
paragraph 72 of the Tunis Agenda, IGF is mandated among others to promote and
assess, on an ongoing basis, the embodiment of WSIS principles in Internet
governance processes. Clear as it is, that means that the principle of the
international management of the Internet, which should be multilateral,
transparent, and democratic, with the full involvement of governments, the
private sector, civil society, and international organizations, and that it
should ensure an equitable distribution of resources, facilitate access for all
and ensure a stable and secure function of the Internet, taking into account
multilingualism. This needs to be properly accommodated as a cross-cutting issue
and we propose that that be taken into account during deliberations on
cross-cutting issues during the Rio meeting. We've taken notes of the dichotomy
between main sessions and topical ones.  We are of the view that the list of the
themes listed in paragraph 72 of the Tunis Agenda for Action, and more
specifically, public policy issues, should be addressed in the main sessions,
and not necessarily in the topical ones. On these issues, we associate and align
ourselves with much of the interventions made by El Salvador on behalf of the
GRULAC and also China, Brazil, and Argentina. One more point, and that is on the
structure of the Rio meeting.  We have taken note of the conclusion that the
same structure would be copied and pasted for Rio. To our mind, any structure
should guarantee maximum interactiveness, I don't know if the word is the right
one, interactiveness of the whole process, not to forget the realities and the
fact that it is -- we admit that it is extremely difficult to manage a truly big
meeting.  We are cognizant of that. It, indeed, is a difficult task and a tall
order, but at the same time , panel discussions should provide a participant to
engage actively upon posing questions -- a question and receiving an answer.
Making panels a bit smaller or more smaller, or smaller, somehow helps us to
achieve that. And lastly, in conclusion, we support another round of
consultations to be organized in September. I thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Thank you very much, and thank you very much for -- and it's
nice to see you back here, also, after the working group. Next is Saudi Arabia.


>>SAUDI ARABIA:  Thank you, sir.  On behalf of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia,
Syria, and Kuwait, I would like to express our thanks to Mr. Nitin Desai and Mr.
Markus Kummer as well as the other members of the group for all the efforts that
they are making in order to make the meeting in Rio a success. We are pleased to
contribute some ideas and opinions, and also address to you a number of
questions. We support most of what we heard by the representative of El Salvador
on behalf of GRULAC and Argentina, China, and Iran. Sir, it seems that the
orientation is to adopt the same themes that were adopted in the Athens forum,
and the reason is the forum held in Athens was successful. Here I would like to
say that the success of the Rio forum does not necessarily mean that we have to
adopt the same themes that we had adopted for Athens.  Because in Rio, the forum
is going to be held at a different moment and in a different place, and,
therefore, it is not necessary for Rio to be a carbon copy of the Athens forum. 
There has to be the scope for discussing other issues as well in Rio. Like, for
example, the critical Internet resources, public policy issues, and the enhanced
cooperation that was mentioned by the Tunis document as well as decision 102
adopted by the plenipotentiaries of which was held in Antalya. Second, it was
indicated that in the forum the stories of success would be discussed, and this,
indeed, is an excellent idea, but what is more important is for us to discuss
the challenges and the obstacles and discuss these and find appropriate
solutions to overcome the obstacles and resolve the problems because this is
going to enhance and promote participation in the forum. As to the other
questions that I would like to make, those revolve around the people who are
going to be invited to attend, that is to say, the panelists, the moderators,
and the chairmen of organs.  What is the mechanism that is going to be adopted
to select them?  I hope that transparency is going to be observed, as well as
geographic distribution, as well as the ideas that they carry, and also an
indication of the circles that they come from or belong to. I hope that this is
going to be decided sufficiently early before the forum, not less than four
months before the forum is held. Fourth, we also would like to know what method
is going to be utilized in order to prepare for upcoming fora.  The fora are
going to be held utilizing the same method or that is going to be discussed in
Rio, and then we could emerge with a generalized conception for how to prepare
for upcoming fora. I thank you, sir.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Perhaps I can respond to the specific questions that you have
raised together. They are fair questions, and I would certainly -- but just one
quick comment on the whole question of panelists and participants. I would
strongly encourage everybody present here to actually send names.  Because,
naturally, it's good to have names in front of you of people with competence in
different areas who could be invited as panelists, et cetera.  So it is always
very difficult to collect these names at the last minute.  So I would strongly
encourage to -- everybody here to send names, particularly in order to ensure
fair regional representation from all sides, to send them to the secretariat. 
And we will completely welcome this exercise. May I suggest quickly on the last
point, at the present stage, right now, we are only talking about Rio.  And
certainly on the last question, I think we have to think as to whether future
forums will necessarily be organized in the same way.  And that is, I think --
we are hopefully -- is hopefully going to be written into the present
constitution.  So I just want to assure you that we are taking this, if you
like, one step at a time.  And are fully aware of the fact that we have to
always keep under review how we actually handle these things in future also. But
these were two questions. But the other question I will respond to later,
particularly on enhanced cooperation. I now have Chile, the Russian Federation,
and then the United States of America. Why is the civil society so quiet?  Why
is the business group so quiet?  Are they so satisfied with everything that we
don't need to listen to them? Ah, there's one, and there's a second one.  Good.
Come.  Chile, Russian Federation, USA, followed by ambassador Peake.  And then
ICC. Microphone for Chile.


>>CHILE:  Thank you.  Thank you, chairman.  We would like to thank you for
having convened these informal consultations on the Internet Governance Forum
and the information on the draft program which was provided by the secretariat.
We'd also like to express gratitude for the exchange of views that we are having
on this.  The delegation of El Salvador made an intervention on behalf of the
Latin American and Caribbean group with which we would like to associate
ourselves. We agree with the elements -- the points made by Brazil in the joint
declaration or statement with Argentina. Chairman, the Internet Governance Forum
is a process which, in principle, will go on for five years, at the end of
which, after formal consultations with the participants of the forum, the
Secretary-General should make recommendations to the members of the United
Nations on this issue. I should like to point out that as in Athens, a
successful meeting was held.  It would be important that in the second meeting
of the forum, which will take place in Rio this year in November, we hope that
we will be able to make significant progress in this important process. Thank
you.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  I have (No microphone).


>>RUSSIAN FEDERATION:  Thank you, Chairman. On behalf of the Russian Federation,
on the Internet Governance Forum's participants, I would like to thank the
secretariat for the work which it has done and tell you about the position of
the Russian Federation on the agenda and the work of the forum. The Russian
Federation on the whole supports the proposed agenda for the second forum. 
However, we have a number of proposals to make on the structure and agenda of
the forum.  This, we think, would improve the quality and effectiveness of its
work. You've already seen the IGF site contribution from Russia.  The Tunis
summit reached an agreement that the Internet is a basic element of the
structure of the information society.  And it is now no longer an R & D tool,
but a public resource of global dimensions which requires new approaches.  One
of the most important issues, undoubtedly, is the participation of international
and intergovernment organizations in Internet governance.  There has to be equal
opportunity for all interested parties, especially from developing countries, in
taking decisions on this issue. This issue was already raised by the
representatives of Brazil, China, El Salvador, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Chile. 
All except one delegation have raised this issue.  In this connection, we
believe that within the framework of the forum, what we have to do is look at
the issue of the role and responsibility of the state in Internet governance at
national and international level, provided by governments of stability, safety,
and continuity of Internet use. Therefore, as we see it, we have to expand the
agenda of the forum, and here we agree with the position of the Chinese
delegation, and include as a priority item the organization of international
Internet governance as a block of issues. We think it is important to look at
this block of issues on the first day of the forum in Rio.  For instance,
instead of the item which is emerging issues, planned for the 15th of November
2007. We'd also like to emphasize that all issues which will be discussed by
participants during the second session of the forum are important and topical. 
However, in the block of issues on security, we think there should be more
issues, we should continue to look at providing security in all aspects in the
context of Internet management and governance as one of the basic issues
underpinning the forum and the Internet in general. Now, we've seen what
happened in Athens.  It was good, but we could improve the efficiency of the
forum.  So we think that at the end of the forum, we should adopt a concluding
document which would show international agreement on Internet issues and show
how far the international community understands Internet issues. Now, Mr. Desai
said that today in New York, a decision is being taken on the work of the
Advisory Group on Internet use for the preparation for the forum.  Now, this is
an issue that we already raised in February of this year.  But I'd like to
repeat it now. And the issue is the following:  It's about the principles of
setting up the new Advisory Group, the membership, the terms of reference, the
procedure for candidates from governments and international and nongovernmental
organizations.  We advocate equal representation of all parties in this body.
And the final question, well, yesterday, day before yesterday, it was said that
in a few days, some meetings would be planned. Could you please tell me more
about that.  Will there be some meetings or not?  Or will these extra meetings
only be held in September?  And what will be the format of these meetings? Thank
you for your attention.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  I think the only reference so far to meetings was that a
further consultation like this in September. I know there's nothing else on my
agenda between now and then.  So I'm not aware of anything else between that and
the September meeting.  But if anybody is, I'd like to know, because I suddenly
find myself being called upon to travel to this place or that place at the last
minute.  But I thought that was the only thing, the September meeting. I don't
know of any other further meetings that are being contemplated right now. Can I
go, then, to the United States.


>>UNITED STATES:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The United States would like to thank
the Internet Governance Forum secretariat for its good work and preparations for
the future meeting in Rio. Like the European Union, we believe the
multistakeholder process within the Internet Governance Forum should continue to
be a guiding principle. The United States supports the program outline as
proposed by Mr. Kummer and the continued elaboration of the four themes from
Athens. The United States would also like to reiterate its continued support for
private-sector leadership in the innovation and investment that has
characterized the development and expansion of the Internet around the globe to
date.  We believe that the genius of the Internet is that it has been
decentralized and private sector-led, encouraging individual creativity, access,
and value added at the edges of the network.  Flexible approaches to the
Internet need to be maintained to support this dynamism.  The dynamism of the
Internet is fueled by the current structures which support and encourage a
bottom-up, participatory approach to Internet development and diffusion. While
this system will, of course, evolve as the Internet grows and changes, the
United States believes that democracy is characterized by the ability of all
stakeholders to participate fully in the Internet's development, not the ability
for governments to control it through a top-down, intergovernmental bureaucracy.
The United States firmly believes that international cooperation has been the
Hallmark of the Internet's development to date and supports continued
cooperation within existing international organizations.  The stability and
security of the Internet is of paramount importance to the U.S. government. The
United States is committed to keeping any ongoing dialogue on Internet
governance open and inclusive, with the participation of all stakeholders. 
Thank you.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Thank you very much. I now have Adam Peake, Ayesha Hassan of
ICC, and Matthew from ISOC, and then UNESCO.


>>ADAM PEAKE:  I'd like to pass this slot over to Bill Drake, who will speak on
behalf of civil society with a statement.  Thank you.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Sure.


>>WILLIAM DRAKE:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  You didn't see my hand, I think. 
But Adam was behind me. The Internet governance caucus has been debating these
issues online at some length, as you might guess, and has adopted two
statements, one on substantive matters and one on procedural matters. I'm going
to outline the main points of the substantive one now.  Some of my colleagues
may wish to amplify some of these points later on.  And then Parminder will get
to the procedural one later on. With regard to the main sessions, I think that
the feeling of a lot of people in the caucuses that while the four themes that
were used in Athens are interesting and helpful, it might be nice to add other
themes as well.  And it might be possible to restructure some of what is
currently envisioned in the draft outline of activities, perhaps by, if
necessary, getting rid of the speed sessions and having more main sessions on
different topics. We saw the need for main sessions on four particular points,
and I think that this resonates with many of the comments that have been made
thus far by governments. First, we'd like to see a main session on global
Internet public-policy issues.  In particular, besides just the sort of general
questions, I think we'd like to probe a little bit deeper into what is public
policy on the Internet and when do we need to use global institutions to
establish it.  After all, the Tunis Agenda distinguishes between technical and
public-policy issues and between public-policy and the day-to-day technical and
operational matters.  What makes an Internet governance issue a public-policy
issue and what happens when policy concerns are closely linked to technical
administration? These are issues we think merit some consideration. Similarly,
what was intended by the Tunis Agenda's call for globally applicable principles
and how can this be pursued?  We'd like to see a session on that. Secondly, we'd
like to see a main session on core Internet resources and their current
governance institutions.  This is, in particular, with reference to ICANN and
the regional Internet registries, but one could look at other dimensions as
well.  In particular, some members felt very strongly, as has been evident also
in this room, that there was a need to discuss certain aspects of the management
of domain names in particular. We would like to see discussion of ICANN's status
as an international organization, its multistakeholder representation of various
constituencies and stakeholders, and the changing role of the Governmental
Advisory Committee within the ICANN. Third, we'd like to see a main session that
deals with what you might call a development agenda for Internet governance and
the impact of Internet governance mechanisms on disadvantaged peoples and
groups.  How do international Internet governance mechanisms impact people's
access to and effective use of the Internet and their access to knowledge?  This
session could try to explore these kinds of questions with regard to property
rights regimes, resource allocation processes, and so on, thinking about these
things in a holistic manner and assessing the extent to which the different
development objectives are or are not being promoted by the existing
institutional arrangements. We think that that is a central consideration if
we're going to have as an overarching thematic focus development to look at the
links between Internet practices and development trajectories. Finally, we'd
also like to see a main theme session on the role and mandate of the IGF.  We've
raised this issue in a number of contributions over the past couple of years. 
The view that, really, we should be taking seriously the agenda that is laid out
for the IGF in the Tunis document.  In particular, we're interested in a
dialogue around how Internet governance mechanisms promote and assess or how the
IGF can help to promote and assess on an ongoing basis the embodiment of WSIS
principles in existing Internet governance mechanisms.  This has also been
raised by the caucus before.  Issues like transparency and inclusion within the
existing frameworks merit some consideration.  There's great variation across
the existing institutions in terms of how they address those issues.  And it
would be helpful to think about that and to identify current practices and good
practices for the future. Last week, we had a meeting in this building on the
ITU's efforts to open up to civil society.  And in this context, we had a
discussion about the fact that ITU, in thinking about how to promote more civil
society participation, would benefit from understanding what other institutions
do with regard to allowing civil society and the private sector to participate
in their activities. I think the same type of approach could be followed here. 
It would be beneficial to everybody to know what are the practices out there
now, who approaches these issues in what manners?  What does it really mean to
implement transparency and inclusion?  What are the procedures adopted?  So we'd
like to see some serious discussion of this issue because we think it's a
central, overarching, cross-cutting question that applies to the way that all
Internet activities are pursued going forward.  These are suggestions about main
themes that, while perhaps slightly orthogonal to what is currently envisioned,
I think could be added and seen to resonate with the views of a number of
governments as well. Thank you.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Would you like to comment now, Parminder?


>>PARMINDER JEET SINGH:  It would be fine if we comment later or if the process
is still open for --


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  The session is open until evening.  It's always open. Okay. 
Then I have Ayesha Hassan from the ICC, followed by ISOC, followed by UNESCO.
The Council of Europe.


>>ICC/BASIS:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Would you -- if you would permit me to, I
would like to have one of my colleagues follow me to just provide a broad range
of input.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Sure.


>>ICC/BASIS:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  My name is Ayesha Hassan, representing
the International Chamber of Commerce and its initiative Business Action to
Support the Information Society, BASIS.  We very much appreciate this
opportunity to provide our views at this informal consultation for the November
2007 Internet Governance Forum on how we believe the forum can be structured and
conducted. These build upon our comments of January 12th, 2007, on the format
and practical recommendations, which is entitled ICC/Basis feedback on IGF
Athens, that were attached to our written contribution to this meeting and that
can be found on the IGF and ICC Web sites. This first ICC/Basis intervention
will provide some general views regarding the IGF in 2007 and our desire to have
it contribute to creating an open, inclusive, people-centric, development on
oriented information society. The second intervention will discuss our thoughts
on some of the specific topics that have been proposed for the meeting in Rio
and how they might seek to achieve that objective. Business once more reiterates
its strong belief that the IGF should focus on helping to spread the benefits of
the information society to more people and involving more people in
Internet-related issues at the national, regional, and international levels. In
addition, given the IGF time constraints, it should allocate its time on matters
that can benefit from the opportunity to share information about activities
underway in many organizations. We think that the first IGF was successful in
this regard, and part of that was due to the form and format, one being having
sessions addressing broad topics that related to the ability to provide an
inclusive, people-centric information society; and, two, by having a format that
stimulated free and open discussions, recognizing that there would not be a need
to prepare and negotiate a text, as has been noted in the written contribution
of the Internet Society, which states, quote, "Athens worked because it was
multilateral, multistakeholder, democratic, and transparent and it was an open
environment free of the governmental pressures of negotiated texts and political
maneuvering. Suggestions that might change the structure and nature of the IGF
for Rio or future meetings need to be approached with great caution and
carefully measured against both the IGF's mandate and paragraph 77 of the Tunis
Agenda," end quote. ICC/Basis joins this approach. We, therefore, suggest that
the following questions should be answered positively to add value for
participants when considering candidate topics for the November IGF. First
question should be, will discussion of this topic at the IGF contribute
positively to ensuring a people-centric, development-oriented information
society. The second question should be, will discussion of this topic at the IGF
contribute to increasing the number of people who can contribute to or access
information using ICTs. And the third question should be, will discussion of
this topic at the IGF help coordinate efforts that are already underway in
multiple other forums and not duplicate discussions in another venue that is
already addressing the topic. ICC/Basis believes that the answer to all of these
questions should be "yes," regarding a topic before it is placed among the
topics on the agenda for the second IGF. In addition, we make the following
general observations and proposals to assist in planning this next IGF meeting,
since the format of the main sessions will have an impact on how the topics are
approached and on the value provided to participants. A, we believe that the
cross-cutting theme of human and institutional capacity-building should feature
in all of the main meeting sessions, and we urge a true integration of concrete
capacity-building elements in the agenda for the IGF in Rio. B, a comprehensive
approach to highlighting existing best practices and those under development in
other forums on all of the main meeting themes is essential to respond to the
input of many participants from all stakeholder groups, and, in particular, from
developing countries. Best practices and lessons learned are not a separate
subject, and thus, must be part of each main session, which will also ensure
that the IGF discussions are not duplicative. C, business supports one reporting
session that gives organizations that are addressing Internet governance-related
issues the opportunity to update the IGF community and each other on
developments as a way of building understanding and helping to raise awareness
of developments in key Internet-related organizations. D, the IGF should provide
a place for stakeholders to get up-to-date information regarding issues being
addressed in existing organizations or which cut across several different
organizations in this one reporting session.  This session can thus be
complementary to the discussions in the main meetings and avoid duplication of
discussions that are taking place in other forums. E, business believes that the
four main topics of security, openness, access, and diversity cover a broad
range of Internet governance issues and that building on the discussions that
took place at the IGF in Athens will be important to make this second IGF
productive, with further exchange on these important issues, which have been by
no means completed. F, business recommends putting the main meeting discussions
on openness and security on the same day, followed by discussions on access and
diversity on a same day.  This would provide a coherent approach to the
interrelationship of each of these two sets of broad topics. G, business
supports the idea of having the IGF secretariat suggest subjects for the main
workshops to supplement the main meeting themes, and to encourage different
stakeholders to express an interest in working collaboratively to organize them.
 The number of all types of workshops should be limited so that people will have
time to attend them, and they should also be well advertised in advance. H,
business supports having the emerging issues session towards the end of the IGF
in Rio, to most effectively highlight new issues that may be discussed
throughout the event. I, the IGF will benefit greatly both in terms of the
quality of the sessions and the interest it generates, if the program is
solidified and anchor participants in sessions are confirmed and publicized by
the end of June. J -- and this is the last recommendation in this intervention
-- one of the benefits of an annual IGF is that it presents opportunities for
new technologies and applications, best practices, and lessons learned to be
presented as real successful projects or programs.  These should be introduced
into our discussions. Mr. Chairman, ICC/Basis members believe that the general
observations and proposals that we have just offered should allow the November
IGF in Rio to build upon the success of the first IGF in Athens.  Furthermore,
we think that the questions that we have identified and proposed are important
to answer positively in considering topics for the second IGF to ensure that it
achieves the important objective of contributing to an open, inclusive,
people-centric development-oriented information society.  Thank you.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  I now have ISOC and UNESCO.  Council of Europe.  The APC. I'm
sorry, one more.


>>:I'm sorry.  Would it be possible?


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Sure.


>>:Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  My name is Ilkka Lakaniemi, Nokia Siemens Networks,
representing the International Chamber of Commerce and its initiative, the
Business Action to Support the Information Society. Earlier, you just heard
about the general views regarding the ICC and basis about the 2007 IGF and our
desire to have it contribute to creating an open, inclusive, people-centric and
development-oriented Information Society. Now we would like to offer comments on
the specific topics that were the subject of the initial IGF in Athens or that
could be considered as emerging topics for the second IGF meeting. ICC/BASIS
input on the specific topics is posted on the IGF and ICC Web sites, and is
available at the back of this room. As indicated earlier, business believes that
the four main topics of security, openness, diversity, and access cover a broad
range of Internet governance issues.  And that building on the discussions that
took place at the IGF in Athens will be important to make the second IGF
productive with further exchange of these important topics. Looking in more
detail at these four themes, the ICC/BASIS offers the following input. The theme
openness should include a discussion of the following subthemes. The roles of
the Internet and ICTs play in promoting access to information and how
governments, business, civil society, and other organizations can work together
to maximize openness and the free flow of information of the Internet. Build
capacity and awareness about how existing intellectual property rights regimes
foster the free flow of information on the Internet as well as consumer
confidence and security. The theme security should include a discussion of the
work underway in multiple private and public sector bodies with substantial
expertise in network security to improve practices in this area. With a special
focus on work that is relevant to small and medium-sized enterprises, and
developing and emerging economies. Practical approaches to raising awareness of
existing best practices for network security issues across all stakeholder
groups. The roles of governments, business, and other stakeholders in adopting
authentication technologies to promote trust online. And private and public
sector organizations that are actively working on privacy issues and improving
the state of play and aspects of their work that may be relevant to emerging and
developing economies and SMEs. Under the discussion of theme diversity should
include the ability of the Internet and ICTs to enhance diversity with limitless
capacity to transmit content. The role that user-generated content plays in
advancing cultural diversity and the exchange of best practices and experiences
that promote user-generated content and its platforms, including profiling
related work in other forums and organizations. The promotion of cultural
diversity, true intellectual property protection.  The standards that facilitate
the creation of new software applications and tools such as translation and
speech technologies. Government and business initiatives to stimulate
development of local content production and providers of online services for
their local market, including, for example, establishing seed funding, training,
incubator services, and the exchange of best practices and experiences. Efforts
underway to introduce internationalized domain names and existing technologies
that increase access to disabled communities, and thus increase the diversity of
participants in the Internet and Internet governance issues. Under the theme
access, we would like to recommend the inclusion of the legal policy and
regulatory conditions that enable investment and innovation, promote competition
and foster entrepreneurship, which are essential in establishing the right
enabling environment to promote access to infrastructure and the benefits of the
Internet. Information and case studies regarding economies that have created
successful enabling environments.  Concrete examples of local build-out and case
studies that promote the exchange of best practices and experiences regarding
improving access for even more people than are currently accessed. ICC/BASIS
proposes then a couple of emerging issues as candidates for discussion at Rio. 
They are, first, the need for all stakeholders to work together to ensure an
environment that facilitates innovation and cross-border services and their
deployment as more are developed for the Internet in the meantime. Many of which
of these services will include software as a critical element.  And second, new
technology developments such as the increasing mobility of the Internet, usage
and applications, and the policy implications of these new technology
developments. ICC/BASIS believes that the cross-cutting theme of human and
institutional capacity building should feature, in all of the main meeting
sessions and urges a true indication of concrete capacity building elements in
the Rio agenda. Therefore, key subthemes that should reflect in all of the main
meeting sessions are, 1) creating multistakeholder, multigenerational and
gender-inclusive dialogue at the national and regional levels on Internet
governance issues. Creating capacities to access to e-skills value chain and
policy development that allows new users of the Internet in developing
countries.  For instance, duty free e-commerce and accredited e-learning that
could be profiled in the emerging issues session. Mr. Chairman, the second IGF
should build upon the success of Athens.  With this in mind, ICC/BASIS has
carefully considered candidate topics and has offered some proposals relative to
the discussion at the second IGF on the four Athens session topics. In addition,
we just heard the consideration of emerging topics, and as these topics are
being proposed, there is a list of questions which should be posed for each
emerging issue. I don't think we need to go even to the -- back to these
questions but you can see those in our papers as well. Thank you, Mr. Chairman,
for the opportunity and -- thank you.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  I'm tempted to suggest that we should get civil society and
business to sit together and work out an agenda because if they can agree then I
think we are there. But that will be a simple solution, which is to have them
sit down, work it out, and if anything they can agree, I think should be
acceptable to everybody else.  Shall we do that?  That will save us all -- we
can all go and enjoy the good weather outside. But I think this is has been all
very valuable, but I will now also ask people to start commenting on what others
have said, because it's important that we get a sense of where people are. For
instance, let's be very clear.  One very strong message which has come through
in the discussion so far has been the expectation that people have that there
will be a visible and open discussion of issues about core Internet resources. 
Let me just put that in shorthand. Now, I would like people to comment on that,
how do you see that?  How do you react to that?  Because this is has come from
different people, this particular suggestion, so I would urge people to comment
on that.  Do you see, from your perspective, is there a problem if that were to
be there?  And that is something that I would like to get your feedback on.
Okay? We will now turn to ISOC, then I have UNESCO, I have the association --
Council of Europe, APC.  There were two or three people from -- I am afraid I
didn't get all the names. It's Eurolinc, and then you, the three of you there
and the fourth there.  We have got enough.  I'm not sure we will get to the full
list by 1:00. So let me turn first to ISOC.


>>ISOC:  Thank you, Chairman. The Internet society's mission is to promote the
open development, evolution and use of the Internet for the benefit of all
people throughout the world.  We continue to believe that the Internet
Governance Forum's cross-cutting themes of capacity building and development,
and the four theme focus areas of openness, diversity, security, and access are
fundamental to increasing the availability of the Internet. These themes and
focus areas oriented the discussion in IGF Athens and continue to provide a very
important foundation for the work of the IGF going forward. In our submission to
the IGF for these consultations, we suggested that while these are the right
themes, clearly we need to add value by discussing these themes in a more
specific sense, in a more narrow sense, and we'd like to suggest some
sub-issues, if you will, that would, we believe, add value for this particular
activity in Rio. A deeper dive, if you will. For access, we believe that the
main focus of this session should be on the importance of enabling environments,
including regulatory regimes, investment climates, and business practices, to
addressing access issues.  And we believe that workshops should explore these
areas in more detail. We believe that a much greater emphasis within the main
session should be placed on experience sharing and best practices, to really
address subparagraph e of the IGF's mandate, which is to advise all stakeholders
in proposing ways and means to accelerate the availability and affordability of
the Internet in the developing world. All stakeholders should be encouraged to
present best or good practices. We also believe that it will be very important
that specific access issues for disadvantaged communities, for reasons of
gender, geography, disability, et cetera, should be highlighted and could be
addressed in workshops.  And that the issue of interconnection costs and the
means for addressing those costs could also be addressed in a workshop. With
regards to openness, we believe that the focus in this session should be on the
challenges to access to information and knowledge, and what can be done to
overcome them.  Challenges might be related to languages and content, censorship
and freedom of expression, training and skills development. We need to focus on
an approach that lends itself to productive problem solving and best practices.
Additionally, this session could be well suited to addressing issues as per
subparagraph k of the mandate arising from issues of use and misuse of the
Internet. For security, the focus on this session should be on the need to
develop and implement a culture of cybersecurity in developing and developed
nations, from the very basic educational and awareness-raising programs for the
individual user through to guidance on improving the security of e-government
services, for example.  Again, we suggest and recommend the sharing of best
practices and how programs have been successfully implemented. For diversity, we
believe very strongly that the main focus of this session should be on creating
demand, and I emphasize creating demand for the diversity of voices, languages,
and, importantly, content on the Internet.  There are a range of impediments to
this, including regulation, lack of skills development, lack of commercial
incentives, that should be addressed. A related discussion should focus on the
importance of user-generated local content to spurring access and increasing
local investment. In the discussion so far this morning there's been a
considerable amount of talk about the need for the IGF to address the entirety
or totality of the mandate.  There's been considerable focus on one particular
aspect of the mandate but I would like to remind us that there are some other
elements that are equally important.  Subparagraphs b, e, f, h, k, et cetera.
Let me talk about one -- two, which is 2f and h, and they are related.  At a
recent event we hosted and sponsored in Abuja in Nigeria related to Internet
governance, there was a vigorous discussion in the afternoon session in which we
had a number of players from a number of stakeholders that talked about how one
actually adds value at a local level from Internet governance discussions.  A
number of speakers pointed to the fact that while much occurs at the
international level, there is very little to ensure that the momentum and
discussions in international meetings is driven forward at the local level.  It
was suggested that this is due in part to lack of suitable multistakeholder
structures and technical and regulatory capacity in many countries. We would
like to suggest that time in Rio would be well spent fulfilling subparagraph h
of the IGF's mandate in which the forum should contribute to capacity building
for Internet governance in developing countries, drawing fully on local sources
of knowledge and expertise.  This is an incredibly important aspect that we have
not sufficiently addressed so far and it would add significant value to many of
the participants who come to Rio, highlighting, for example, examples of
successful multistakeholder Internet governance discussions at the local level
would be a very useful step in this direction. Thank you, Chairman.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  UNESCO. I have UNESCO and then I have the three people that I
identified there, Council of Europe.  Then Mary Rundle sitting in the back, and
then we will come to the others.  And APC.  Yes. Can we start with UNESCO,
please. I request people now to be a little crisper because we are -- a lot of
points have been made.  If they are made, they don't need to be made again, but
let's move on.


>>UNESCO:  Thank you, Chairman.  UNESCO appreciates the opportunity to address
this meeting and I'm not sure I can promise you to be much more crisp than many
of the other speakers. We are delighted to see the increasing interest in the
international debate surrounding the issue of Internet governance. We reiterate
our thanks to you, Chairman Desai, and to secretary Kummer also for your efforts
to foster the multistakeholder dialogue on very core issues of Internet
governance. As a key stakeholder in the debate and issues that are crucial to
enhanced free flow of ideas by word and image and to promote cultural and
linguistic diversity, UNESCO considers the Internet Governance Forum as an
excellent opportunity to foster this dialogue in a truly multistakeholder
environment. Concerning the second meeting of the IGF in Rio in November, we
appreciate the efforts made to maximize the opportunity to open dialogue.  The
basic meeting structure outlines in the document dated 30 of April 2007 that the
IGF Secretariat has prepared provides, we think, good opportunities to achieve
this goal. UNESCO also welcomes the continuous focus of the main sessions in Rio
on the four main themes of the substantive IGF debate:  Access, openness,
diversity and security. We particularly appreciate the proposal to organize an
additional main session on emergent issues that would allow the IGF to react to
the very rapidly changing Internet environment, and also the best practices
sessions that will allow us to pay much more attention to the capacity building
issues in the developing world as many other speakers have mentioned here today.
Regarding the initial proposals related to the content of the meeting, UNESCO
appreciates the focus and freedom of expression and freedom of information under
the main theme openness and on local content development and the related subject
of multilingualism and, in particular, internationalized domain names, under the
main theme of diversity. These proposals are fair and are square within the
areas that UNESCO promotes to building knowledge societies using the power of
the Internet. UNESCO intends to build its contribution to the forum in Rio on
its technical expertise, its large group of stakeholders, and the experience
gained in the past in governance related events.  We will be preparing proposals
for the organization of one open forum and two workshops in the areas of
openness and diversity, respectively. These workshop proposals will be
established in close cooperation with other stakeholders, building on the
results of the two workshops organized at the Internet Governance Forum in
Athens.  We also intend to actively participate in activities of the various
dynamic coalitions that are related to our areas of competence. Thank you for
your attention.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  I have.


>>ENSTA:  Good morning, Francis Muguet.  We are going to summarize some points
of the legal study we did with regard to the legal process of the IGF. First of
all, with regard to the mandate, we have noted that only one point of the
mandate that is establishing discussions was really covered. Now, not even the
point of view of the publication of the proceedings was fulfilled, because the
transcripts was an unformatted output and the proceedings is much more
formatted. If we look at certain points, for example, there is the advice
identified in article E, subparagraph g, it means that the IGF as an entity or
as a body produces council documents.  And this needs to be planned. 
Furthermore, and ISOC referred to this, we need to strengthen help, assistance. 
The IGF should provide the context for this. And furthermore, the IGF must make
recommendations on emerging issues and this is important. So we see that so far,
the mandate of the IGF has not been fulfilled, really. Now, with regard to
organization, the mandate, Article 78 and others of the Tunis Agenda, stipulate
organization and it does not provide for multistakeholder group existing.  But
we need to set up entities that have been provided for in the agenda, and
notably a bureau. Now, the wider problem of the legal framework globally of the
forum, what is it?  The forum is one which was convened by the secretary-general
of the United Nations. It is also a forum that has resulted from an
intergovernmental process of the United Nations.  And consequently, it is a
forum which exists within the public international law. Now, what is new about
this forum is that it is a multistakeholder process, in that there are no
observers, such as in the WSIS process.  All the partners are on an equal
footing from a legal point of view. It means that this is a new domain of public
international law that the United Nations have given birth to and which poses
some questions. Certain members of the civil society are extremely desirous to
see this multistakeholder process being a formal recognition, legal -- has -- is
recognized formally and legally because in a forum where everyone can speak
represents significant progress. But for it to be recognized legally, this would
even be more significant. Now this brings us back to the creation of the bureau.
 And as a representative of Brazil said, this bureau must be a multistakeholder
bureau. In our opinion, it should be as inclusive as possible. In the study of
the transcripts we have seen that there is the Internet community which would
like very much to be recognized as a partner, a full-fledged partner, and this
rightly so, because the community currently, which has the effective governance
-- has the effective governance of the Internet.  Consequently, it has been
proposed that the bureau has at least four members, an intergovernmental
component, a component from the private sector, one from civil society, and,
lastly, from the Internet community. This would ensure that the process is as
inclusive as possible, and that all partners are recognized equally from a legal
point of view.  Now, then, if there should be a bureau, then procedural rules,
multistakeholder procedural rules could be established to ensure that the
forum's mandate could be fully met.  Otherwise, we would be faced with the
problem of the chicken and egg. In other words, we couldn't effectively fulfill
the mandate since there would be no procedure and as there is no body to
establish the procedures, then we can do nothing. And the forum would remain a
discussion forum. Of course, this would be multistakeholder, but this would not
be in accordance with the WSIS texts. I would add something further.  At these
consultation meetings, this is not the place for us to renegotiate the WSIS
texts.  These are texts which were established by 172 member states with the
participation or consultation of multistakeholders, and consequently, the
establishment of a bureau should not even be an open issue.  It is something
that is already acquired. But the composition of the bureau is something that is
worthy of discussion as well as the procedural rules, multistakeholder
procedural rules. I would add that, among states, if we are to be logical from a
legal point of view, among the states, it would be intergovernmental rules that
would apply. I thank you for your attention.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Can I have Council of Europe and then the lady from
(inaudible). (inaudible) and then I have APC.


>> Mike!


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  My apologies.  My apologies. I am used to the U.N. system
where the Chairman's mike is always on, and here I have to switch it on. Can I
just give the sequence, please. I have Council of Europe has been waiting for a
while.  It is my mistake. I have the lady from -- the gentleman from there, yeah
Eurolinc, and then I have APC, I have Mary Rundle, and I have Emily Taylor from
Nominet and the gentleman there.  Six people.  I think we can accommodate six.
Yes, can I have the Council of Europe, please.


>>COUNCIL OF EUROPE:  Thank you Mr. Chairman.  Good afternoon, ladies and
gentlemen.  The Council of Europe Secretariat thanks the U.N. and the IGF
Secretariat and you, Mr. Chairman for your work this year and welcomes the draft
program outline and the proposals regarding the basic structure of the IGF
meeting in Rio, the meeting types, the format and so on. In particular, the
Council of Europe Secretariat concurs with the proposal to retain the four
themes -- openness, security, diversity and access -- as a basic structure on
which to hang and to build dialogue. For the Council of Europe, these themes
underline that above all, the Internet and its governance are about people and
their rights, freedoms and values.  And as others have said this morning, the
IGF must remain people-centered. The Council of Europe Secretariat welcomes the
opportunity to work with other stakeholders, including dynamic coalitions, in
contributing to workshops and to main session discussions. Already this morning
we are discussing with WBU regarding a joint workshop on the public service
value of the Internet and the role of the media.  In particular, public service
media. The Council of Europe secretariat welcomes the proposal for major
organizations to organize their own open forums and to report on their
activities.  Here, the Council of Europe would be willing to organize its own
forum, to share its expertise in Rio in a number of key fields.  And these
fields include its work on cybercrime, sexual exploitation of children and
trafficking on the Internet, child pornography, and the burning questions such
as, for example, is virtually child abuse in Web sites acceptable or contrary to
our values, rights, and freedoms, and, of course, to the rule of law. The
Council of Europe would like to share its expertise with regard to new case law
of the European court of human rights, with regard to the positive and negative
obligations of states and their responsibilities in protecting rights and
freedoms contained in the European Convention on Human Rights, and, for example,
in considering how these obligations sit in relation to the roles and
responsibilities of other nonstate actors such as ICANN. Other Council of Europe
work of note, with regard to freedom of expression and private life and what
these really mean in practice, much work is already going on in the Council of
Europe with regard to the transparency and the processing and presentation of
information on the Internet, with regard to the provision of information,
guidance, and other forms of assistance to Internet users, with regard to the
quality and reliability of information on the Internet, with regard to flexible
content creation and IPRs, with regard to technical filtering measures. 
Moreover, the Council of Europe is willing to share its work on human dignity
and violent video games on the Internet with particular emphasis on the rights
of children and their education and skills in using the Internet.  And also,
there is current ongoing work in the Council of Europe regarding the drafting of
a legal instrument on the use and misuse of the Internet and the purchase of
medicines. Mr. Chairman, in moving forward in IGF preparations, we must be clear
and realistic about what we can achieve in Rio.  There is a need to focus, as
others, including Brazil and ISOC have touched upon, on a finite list of key
specific issues within the four-theme structure so that participants may drill
down into the issues and, in response, resurface with better understandings and
a clearer resolve towards action that is realistic and achievable.  The Council
of Europe is trying to do exactly that, focusing itself.  And it is hoped that
this is what preparations for the IGF will succeed in doing. One final point,
Mr. Chairman.  One name for you, you asked for names of those who could take
part in different sessions. Mrs. Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, Deputy Secretary
General of the Council of Europe, and human rights expert and an expert in the
field of children and children's rights.  Thank you.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Thank you. There. I am speaking for Eurolinc, which is a
nonprofit association for multilingualism on the Internet.  My name is Louis
Pouzin.  I would just first take a short moment to commend the wonderful work
accomplished by the secretariat for putting up Athens, one thing, but then now
also on working very hard on organizing the Rio event.  But as my colleague,
Francis Muguet, already explained, we certainly have need to improve the
mechanisms that contribute to the organization of those major events. The
bureau, as he presented it, would be, apparently, as we think, a reasonable
solution to a situation which is certainly difficult to handle, because it's a
novelty, it's an innovation within the U.N. environment.  A multistakeholder
bureau is certainly something that has no existing model and which has to be
invented somehow.  Maybe we will appreciate very much if this proposal would be
conveyed to the attention of the Secretary-General of the United Nations. Now,
assuming that we have these institutions, this structure established, we think
it would have the advantage to separate clearly the functions of administrative
and clerical and secretarial support on the one hand and the handling of the IGF
meeting contents on the other hand. The bureau could be very helpful in
coordinating, for example, the actions of the different host countries for
establishing a multiyear plan, as was already suggested by another colleague
here, and also to balance the subjects which could be studied in each -- balance
the participation which could be looked for for the various events, for example,
Athens was not very attended by the southern American people, so we might
promote much better participation for the Rio event. But, now, on the contents,
I think what we need is something that's not clearly established yet, is, like
in any international event in which we talk about subjects which are both
intellectual and emerging and innovative, we need an International Scientific
Committee, something which is quite classical in most scientific events.  We
need a group of 50 to 60 people who are selected due to their personal
competence, personal knowledge, ability, in order to study the themes to be
handled, to be treated and then prepare the appropriate contents for a call for
tender, and then proceed as usual with the review of the proposals and so on. 
This is not something unusual in international events. And I think this would
contribute very much to the reputation of the IGF as a major international
event.  It would also contribute to a much better balance of views in selecting
themes and selecting speakers, allocating the appropriate time, and so on. We
think that the organizational part is probably not the major problem, because
host countries are very much equipped to handle most of the work, hand in hand
with the bureau.  But on the other hand, the International Scientific Committee
doesn't have to be a permanent set of people.  It could be selected year by
year.  That doesn't mean some people would not appear regularly, but it doesn't
have to be the same body from year to year. That's the contribution I wanted to
make.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Thank you very much. Can I have the APC.


>>APC:  Thank you, Mr. Chairperson. My name is Willie Currie.  I'm the ICT
policy manager for the Association for Progressive Communications. We have a
written statement which we will submit to the secretariat during the course of
the day, so I won't go into great detail. What we want to say is also that we
support the statements and inputs of the Internet governance caucus. Regarding
the issue of critical Internet resources and ICANN, it's clear that some
stakeholders want to discuss ICANN and the management of critical Internet
resources; others do not and urge caution in adding the issue to the themes. We
have a suggestion of a way that might address this complex and, in a way,
stalemated issue.  And that is that the IGF should have a standing annual
interinstitutional dialogue session which focuses on Paragraph 72b of the Tunis
Agenda, which is to facilitate discourse between bodies dealing with different
cross-cutting international public policies regarding the Internet and discuss
issues that do not fall within the scope of any existing body. And we would like
to propose that out of the existing Internet governance bodies, that at the Rio
event, ICANN, WIPO, and the WTO be invited to participate in such a dialogue. 
And in that way, the issue could be addressed. The second point we want to make
is with respect to access.  We've heard the view of the ICC and BASIS that the
issue should focus on an enabling environment, strong focus on regulatory
regimes and investment.  Obviously, the moment one says "enabling environment,"
the question is enabling environment for whom, on what terms, and so on.  We
think that a useful debate could be generated around this.  We are interested in
looking at open access approaches to access, using the layered model of the
Internet where we would look at the physical layer of infrastructure, including
not just private sector, privately owned networks, but also municipal networks
and community-based networks.  We would look at the logical layer and look at
access to free and open source software and raise the issues around proprietary
uses of software.  At the content layer, we would look at the debate around
intellectual property rights and the issue of fair use, fair use being something
which is not exported long with maximalist approaches of two IPRs in developing
countries.  Roughly, the content layer would address the access to knowledge
framework. So in a sense, we would like to see a debate between nonmarket
approaches to access and market approaches to access.  And we think that out of
that, we could start to address 72(e), which says that, "The IGF should advise
all stakeholders in proposing ways and means to accelerate the availability and
affordability of the Internet in the developing world." In other words, we think
that there should be debate and dialogue in the access plenary session, but
there should also be some attempt to move beyond dialogue, towards the
requirement in the IGF mandate to produce advice. Then on the subject of the
bureau, APC is of the view that the combination of the IGF secretariat and the
multistakeholder Advisory Group satisfies the requirements of paragraph 78b, and
we wish to express full confidence in the current arrangements and in the IGF
secretariat in particular. We are strongly opposed to the creation of a bureau,
as it will cause unnecessary power struggles, particularly in civil society, and
would be counter productive to the purposes of the IGF as a space for
multistakeholder dialogue. We do have concerns that the multistakeholder
Advisory Group has currently limited representation from civil society and needs
to improve its reporting in the interests of greater transparency, as well as a
need for it to be adequately financed to fulfill its tasks. However, we feel
that the issue addressed by strengthening the IGF secretariat through greater
resource mobilization and other approaches, such as secondments and internships.
In addition, ad hoc multistakeholder working groups, which could work on
preparation of themes and sessions, could be established and be open to broader
participation. And we also have a view that the reporting format which the IGF
uses to report on its activities should report against the specific requirements
of Paragraph 72 of the Tunis Agenda. We will make the written statement
available. Thank you very much.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Thank you very much. The gentleman from there, followed by
Mary Rundle.  I have four people.  Switzerland and Emily Taylor.  Let's -- why
don't we do it in this sequence.  I have forgotten altogether which sequence I
called it.  Let's just go this way, this way, Emily Taylor, and Switzerland.


>>APRIL:  Thank you.  I have a procedural issue to raise.  It might seem
technical and organizational, but it does cover the essential issues discussed
here.  And it is about the knowledge from IGF, how it can be consolidated to
help all public and private partners.  All players have to express their opinion
if the forum is to be meaningful, especially those from civil society.  That is
why, as regards physical meetings, is the -- the number of fora must not be
limited.  Intergovernmental documents are usually produced on a basis of
negotiation.  But we saw at the Tunis summit that the essential issues did not
meet consensus.  And that is why IGF was established.  The other, diametrically
opposed, option is to publish transcripts of each statement.  But then the
knowledge is diluted and not very easy to use, because we do not crystallize the
main points.  Neither of these two approaches is, therefore, a very good one. As
to an issue for multistakeholder Internet, why shouldn't we use Internet
practices as regards production of open knowledge?  We all know about Wikipedia.
 This is a collaborative way of building synthesis documents which highlight
points of convergence and divergence between contributors who agree on a joint
drafting of points on which they agree and on -- and agree on the existence of
paragraphs on points of disagreements. Access of all participants to a single,
dynamic site to draft such a dynamic document for the forum would be a good
symbol for openness, democracy, and inclusion in the forum.  Use of free, open
software to set up this document would be another strong signal.  Thus, in my
view, after the five years, the process of this forum could shed light on
emerging Internet issues for all stakeholders.  Thank you.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  That's a very interesting idea.  But -- let's think about it.
I have Mary Rundle from the -- Harvard, Berkman Center, Emily Taylor from
Nominet, and then -- well, the -- let's see.  And Switzerland.  I'm not sure
we'll be able to go beyond these three.  Then we can come back after lunch and
continue. Mary Rundle.


>>MARY RUNDLE:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  I'm speaking on behalf of the Free
Expression Online dynamic coalition that formed as a follow-up to the first
Internet Governance Forum meeting in Athens last year. This coalition celebrates
article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which holds that
everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression.  This right
includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive, and
impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. The
coalition also looks to the 2003 WSIS Geneva declaration of principles, which
reads, in part, "Communication is a fundamental social process, a basic human
need, and the foundation of all social organization.  It is central to the
information society." I would like to call your attention to a contribution made
by the Free Expression Online dynamic coalition found on the IGF Web site under
"contributions."  The paper tells how protecting freedom of expression on the
Internet is crucial because free expression is the foundation of democracy,
essential to the individual pursuit of happiness, and a tool that provides
protection for other foundational human rights and basic freedoms. Moreover,
this freedom promotes education and enables human development.  The paper also
urges, in planning for the Rio meeting, that the IGF community consider several
points.  And here I'll note three. First, freedom of expression should have a
prominent place in the agenda, since it is implicated by all four of the main
IGF themes, especially the openness theme. Similarly, civil liberties as a whole
are cross-cutting, foundational concerns that all workshops and main sessions
should factor in. Finally, the IGF can add value by emphasizing a
multistakeholder and cross-dimensional approach in the development of
technologies and technical standards, as these processes carry serious
implications for civil liberties. On behalf of the Free Expression Online
dynamic coalition, I thank you for your attention to these concerns and best
practices that are foundational for a thriving information society.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  (inaudible).


>>EMILY TAYLOR:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  I'd like to join those others who
have commended the paper produced by the secretariat.  In my view, it promises a
vibrant and innovative format to build on the success of the Athens meeting.
Particularly, I'd like to see integration of themes between the main panel
sessions and the supporting workshops and best practices themes so that the main
sessions can perhaps draw together issues, summarize and look for linkages and
highlight developments around the core four themes. Mr. Chairman, you asked for
comments on the statements made so far.  And as a representative of a manager of
core resources on the Internet, I recognize that this is an issue which
continues to draw keen interest, at least in the rarefied world of international
Internet governance discussions. This is why I welcome the proposal for
reporting sessions.  This will support Paragraph 72(j) of the Tunis Agenda. 
However, building on the Council of Europe's intervention, I would very much
support calls for a people-centered IGF.  In my experience of trying to engage
stakeholders on these issues for many years, they really don't care at all about
the management of core Internet resources.  In my experience.  I note this is
not a view shared in this room.  But they do care about spam, security, child
protection, access, the digital divide, many of the issues which we have seen
discussed or started to be discussed in Athens. So it is worth recalling how far
discussion of core Internet resources eclipsed these other important issues
during the WSIS process.  And though these issues are central to the IGF's
mandate, in particular, security, Paragraph 72a, availability and affordability
of Internet access, 72e, capacity-building, 72h, and sharing of best practices,
72d, this, of course, also supports paragraph 80 and is a particular area of
interest for Nominet.  We are planning on launching a best practice challenge in
June this year, which is open to all organizations in the U.K., to highlight
areas of best practice based around the four themes which were discussed in
Athens. We were hoping to bring and showcase these examples and short-listed
entries in the Rio meeting, and thus -- and also to explore ways of
collaborating with parliamentarians and government to try to get a U.K.-Internet
governance forum process going to support the international discussions. To
conclude, Nominet advocates focus and adding value and to continue developing
the themes of security, openness, diversity, and, above all, access, and in this
way, build on the success of Athens. These discussions are not done; they have
just started.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  (inaudible).


>>SWITZERLAND:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  First of all, I would like to thank
you and the secretariat and also the Advisory Group for the good work that has
been done up to now. We would also like the second IGF in Rio to build on the
success of the first IGF, but at the same time, join in trying to improve some
of the weak points of the first IGF. We think it's crucial that the IGF sticks
to its free and open format and to a true multistakeholder approach which
enables an interactive discussion between representatives of all on an equal
level.  We would also join other speakers who were supporting to continue with
the four main themes, and we would also support the Council of Europe and others
in the view that the IGF should remain people-centered. What should be improved
is, first of all, the participation, especially the participation of the South,
which was not satisfactory at all at the first meeting.  And we should find ways
and means to facilitate this participation from the South for the next meeting
in Rio. With regard to the issues, we would also support a more narrower focus
within those four themes on issues in order to have a deeper discussion on
issues than to have a broader discussion on many issues. We support the idea of
having shorter main sessions, smaller panels, and a better link between
workshops and main sessions, and a limited number of work sessions. We also
support the -- providing space for existing institutions and mechanisms that
deal with Internet governance issues to provide for more transparency and
understanding of their roles and responsibility. So we support the general
direction of the program outlined and meeting schedule that was proposed on the
Web site of the Internet Governance Forum. There have been different proposals
with regard to what to do with the session on the emerging issues.  There are
reasons for having a session on emerging issues at the beginning of the IGF,
because this one could look at the past year and see -- could refer to what was
discussed under the emerging issues session at the end of the last meeting and
see what has happened during this year and also hint at what and where
discussions will take place during the current IGF.  But there's also reasons
for having an emerging issues session at the end of the IGF, where kind of we
can do a stock-taking of what has been discussed and maybe identify issues that
have not been discussed yet. So we could even think of having two sessions on
emerging issues, one at the beginning and one at the end of the IGF. Like I said
at the beginning, the IGF is basically a forum where a free and open interactive
discussion and exchange of views and best practices should take place.  And we
think it's important that the IGF should stay like this. However, some people
feel that the IGF should have an impact that goes beyond just discussing issues.
 They feel that the IGF should facilitate discussions, but also concrete
solutions to challenges connected to the Internet and Internet governance. Now
the question is how should this be achieved. At the first session of the IGF in
Athens, a series of dynamic coalitions has been formed.  These coalitions formed
themselves in order to work between meetings to promote action that should
emerge from the discussions at the IGF. This is a good idea, and I think -- we
think we have to support those dynamic coalitions, because if they do good work,
they can help the IGF to have an impact outside the meeting rooms. And so we
support the idea to give the dynamic coalitions space during the IGF to present
their work and find others who join this work.  But this is not enough.  Those
dynamic coalitions need more support and guidance with regard to what they can
achieve, and they need clearer mechanisms of interaction between the dynamic
coalitions and the IGF, but also with other fora. And they need more people who
are willing to work on these issues, also between the meetings. Apart from the
dynamic coalitions, we should find other ways that could be used to give the IGF
more impact.  According to the Tunis Agenda, the IGF has a mandate to make
recommendations to emerging issues.  This is something that can be done.  But we
think that we have to be very careful when trying to do -- to make
recommendations. What we certainly do not want is that the IGF is turned into an
event where we spend the whole time negotiating on some final paper on which
everybody has to agree. However, we would basically support that there is some
kind of visible outcome of the IGF.  In this context, we would like to recall
the proposal made by Wolfgang Kleinwaechter, I think it was at the last
consultation, that the IGF should, rather than try to agree on recommendations,
come up with a list of messages.  These messages could even be controversial or
contradictory and not everybody would have to agree on all of them, but they
would be something that people would take notice of and that people would
continue to discuss at other fora. In any way, we think it will be important
that the IGF remains a platform for an open and free discussion among all
interested stakeholders. But at the same time, one or more members should be
found that what happens within the IGF has more outreach to other fora and
existing mechanisms where similar or the same issues are dealt with and
decisions are made. With regard to the proposal brought up by some speakers that
the IGF should focus more on public policy issues, especially those that are
linked to the coordination/management of critical Internet resources, we think
that basically there is no subject that is forbidden to be addressed in the
frame of the IGF.  But if we remember right, then in the discussions of last
year, there was the idea or the understanding that there were two separate
processes that have resulted from the Tunis summit with regard to Internet
governance.  One is the IGF, and the other one is the so-called process of
enhanced cooperation that was supposed to be started by the U.N.
secretary-general by the end of the first quarter of 2006. Unfortunately, this
process has not been very visible up to now.  But since we think that the
development with regard to this second process will have an impact on the
discussion about what issues should be dealt with at the IGF or should be dealt
with elsewhere, we would very much like to know more about the development of
the second process. And we would express our interest in the proposal made by
WIllie Currie from APC just a few minutes ago about having a standing annual
dialogue between relevant existing mechanisms with regard to the public policy
interests on Internet governance mechanisms. And finally, Switzerland who has
supported WGIG and the IGF Secretariat from its beginning would like to join
those who call on all stakeholders for better funding of the IGF and its
Secretariat. Thank you.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Thank you very much, and I want to take this opportunity of
thanking the government of Switzerland particularly for the consistent support
it has given this process and particularly the financial support and of course
lending us Markus Kummer, as being the most important bit of support that you
have given us.  So I really thank you for that. Again, I think we should stop
now.  I have Parminder and (saying name) and we will start when we come back
because there's no point in rushing things now. Thank you very much.  I will see
you at 3:00 here. [ Lunch ] AFTERNOON SESSION (Gavel.)


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Good afternoon.  Can we begin?  Can people settle down. I
have Parminder Jeet Singh of I.T. for Change, followed by Riaz Tayob of Third
World Network.  And then I have Mr. Sogo Fujisaki and David Olive of Fujitsu.
Parminder.


>>:Microphone.


>>PARMINDER JEET SINGH:  Thank you, chairperson. This is a contribution from the
civil society Internet governance caucus. You heard a contribution in the
morning by Bill Drake, my colleague, which dealt with the substantive issues. 
And this contribution mainly deals with issues of the process at IGF and up
towards IGF. Though there are a couple of substantive issues as well, which I
will add at the end. The caucus wishes to express its satisfaction with and
great appreciation for the widespread and genuine adoption of multistakeholder
principle for all activities of the IGF.  And we hope that this practice is kept
up and strongly institutionalized in the IGF as its key constituted principle.
If we are able to do so, along with delivering real outputs from the process, an
issue which has been spoken about here, IGF will become a path-breaking
innovation in global governance, which we really look forward for it to become.
We are, in general, also satisfied with the openness of the IGF process, with
its regular processes of regular consultations like this one, and taking in of
phone inputs and compilation of these inputs for the various meetings.  As for
the main sessions and the workshop structures, we are for a greater connection
between the various workshops, an issue which has already been highlighted in
the draft program outlines.  And we follow the proposal of having official
reporting back from the workshops into the main session a very useful proposal.
We also find the proposal of open sessions for all major organizations dealing
with Internet governance-related issues to discuss their activities very
promising, and I think this would go a long way to fulfill the Tunis mandate of
IGF in 72b and 72c, of facilitating discussion between these two bodies and
interfacing with them. However, it would be useful if the IGF specifically
requests and encourages some of these bodies which have important IG
implications to hold such open forums. We heard APC speak about an institutional
dialogue forum which could in some way be related to these open forum. And this
is something which we would like to look at as well. We are also strongly of the
opinion that there should be no limitations on the number of the open workshops
as far as possible and within very broad limitations of logistics, as long as
they conform to the overall mandate of the IGF as per the Tunis Agenda. We would
like all the sessions and workshops to be more interactive rather than a series
of panel presentations.  We would like to see further development of online
processes for remote participation for the participants to keep track of
parallel events and for greater inter-sessional activity of the IGF.  And in
this regard, we'd like the IGF to develop into a continuing process using its
various online and offline components rather than just a single annual event. We
also appreciate many comments which are looking for strengthening the process of
dynamic coalitions within the IGF process, and we appreciate (inaudible) stand
that more support and guidance is needed for the dynamic coalitions to become an
important device of delivering outcomes within the IGF. We are also happy to see
that the draft program outline mentions that the preparatory process for Rio
meeting will be as open and as inclusive as possible.  In this regard, we have
some comments to make on the composition and the role of the multistakeholder
Advisory Group. We note that the proportionate representation of stakeholder
groups in the cross-cutting technical and academic communities was not openly
and transparently discussed prior to its appointment.  And we think that if
clear terms and rules can be established by the Advisory Group between now and
Rio through an open process involving all participants in the IGF as a shared
foundation for our common work and if these rules are in place, it will be
possible for the Secretary-General to do the actual process of selection of the
Advisory Group members in close, direct, open, and transparent consultations
with the stakeholder groups themselves.  We also express dissatisfaction with
the very limited representation of civil society in the first instance of the
Advisory Group, which amounted to about five members over about 40.  We think
that the significant part, especially of civil society and individual users, as
proved by the WGIG, is key to making Internet governance a success both in
practical and political terms, and thus we would like to see such participation
expanded to at least one-fourth of the group, if not one-third, which would be
at the same level of the private sector and the Internet technical community. We
also -- the Commission on Science and Technology notes that the main task of the
Advisory Group was to prepare the substantive agenda and program for the first
meeting of the IGF.  And this is a quote from the submission.  It was made clear
that any decision to -- how to prepare subsequent meetings and how to further
structure in future working methods of the IGF would be taken in light of the
experiences made during the preparatory process for the Athens meetings.  We are
not clear what is being done in this regard, though we noted the clarification
by the chairperson that we are -- the IGF secretariat and (inaudible) is going a
step at a time.  We appeal that all the changes which are made to the process
are transparent, open, and involves all the stakeholders. On the issues of the
logistics of the IGF meeting in Rio, we hope that the host country and all those
responsible for organizing the event will ensure that all participants,
specifically those from the civil society and other underresourced groups face
no difficulty speaking, specifically from the experience of Athens, we
specifically request that adequate, inexpensive arrangements for lunch be made
available at the venue and inexpensive accommodation is made available close to
the venue with adequate transport facilities, and we request adequate wireless
connectivity with enough number of computer terminals, something which we do
really hope that the committee will take care of. While the separate statement
on substantive issues took up the four main issues which we would like to be
taken up in the main sessions, the two specific issues I will add to the ones
which we have mentioned, one is to join many delegates here to express
dissatisfaction about the lack of transparency and inclusion in the so-called
enhanced cooperation process, which was agreed at Tunis that it should discuss
these matters in a multistakeholder fashion. We ask that prompt communication is
given to all stakeholders about the status and the nature of this process and
that steps are taken to include the full inclusion of all stakeholders in this
process. The second substantive point which we would like to make is that we
would like to see human rights, which are a set of fundamental rights that are a
prerequisite for development of individuals, groups, as well as nations, to be
included as a cross-cutting theme along with development theme for the Rio
meeting. We end with a note of thanks for Mr. Desai, Mr. Kummer, and all members
of the multistakeholder Advisory Group, as well as for the IGF secretariat, for
their hard and often thankless work in developing the IGF processes thus far in
such a successful manner.  We greatly look forward to the Rio meeting of IGF to
take these processes further to enable the IGF to meet its full mandate. This
was the agreed statement input to the process.  With the permission of the
chair, I would like to make two comments which are about the issues which have
been taken up during the discussions here. One is about taking up the issue of
Internet core resources for discussion during the IGF.  And I'm unable to see
what could be the real nature of opposition to take these issues up, because
it's only a matter of discussing those issues and not a matter of making a
policy on those issues.  And, normally, it's agreed that even if one-third,
one-fourth, or one-fifth agrees for an issue to be taken up, generally, the
issue does get taken up.  So for me, I'm not able to understand the nature of
the opposition for just even discussing an issue.  And I would appeal to my
colleagues that this opposition may not stay, because -- and I would -- there
was some -- there were some reasons which were proposed here that why should
these issues not be taken up.  And one of the reasons taken up by one of the
speakers was that in her experience, the people who really use Internet are not
really concerned with these issues. And I think I would greatly differ with this
issue, and I think it's -- this statement is at the same level as to say that
people who suffer ill health are not worried about issues of I.P. or generic
drugs.  They are not because they don't know about those issues.  But those
issues directly affect them. And I think this kind of separation doesn't work,
and our organization, who works in the field among poor people in ICT projects
know that these issues do impact them.  And I think they can take the word of
the developing countries that these issues do matter to the people who use
Internet and who are denied access to the Internet. And the second -- second
logic which is given for not discussing Internet core resources is this process
of enhanced cooperation whereby at one -- it's treated as there are two
different processes which came out of WSIS and this somehow should be kept
separate.  So while enhanced cooperation should probably not be discussed at
IGF, critical Internet resources and public-policy implications should not be
discussed at IGF because they are supposed to be discussed at the enhanced
cooperation process. But I do not think that this separation between two outputs
of WSIS is on the basis of issues, is on the basis of what processes -- what
kind of working would happen in this IGF is space for discussion, and enhanced
cooperation is a space for developing policies.  And the separation is on this
count and not on the count of issues, whether one issue should be only taken up
at one place and it should not be taken at another place. To end my
intervention, I would like to make a clarification, I was told by my colleagues
that some civil society members here proposed a bureau structure for the IGF,
and some government delegates were inquiring whether that is the official
position of the Internet governance caucus.  And I would like to clarify that
Internet governance caucus right now do not have any position on that.  They
have not considered the issue.  And that is the opinion of some members who
directly expressed the opinion on their own behalf or on the behalf of the
organizations they represent. Thank you, chairman.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  The next person I have is Riaz Tayob. Riaz.


>>RIAZ TAYOB:  Thank you, Mr. Chair.  I am from the Third World Network which
enjoys representation in Asia, Latin America and Africa and deals with issues of
concern to developing countries. Chairman Desai, congratulations on your
reappointment as special advisor to the secretary-general. The points I wish to
raise should not detract from the excellent work and commitment shown by the
Secretariat.  We would prefer that they be taken in the spirit of safeguarding
the Internet Governance Forum as one of the legitimate fora that is able to
discuss internet related issues. Recalling our previous submission to the
February consultation where we placed on record our serious concerning the
Margization of our concerns to developing countries, the handling of the
discussion of critical Internet resources during a plenary session and we
emphasized the need for all individuals, materially associated with the IGF
process to disclose their interests -- in particular, the after affiliation or
links to institutions currently in charge of critical Internet resources. We
trust that your review of the transcript confirms our assessment regarding our
concerns on the plenary discussion. As we were called alarmist in many quarters
for that statement, it is with great hesitation that we make the following
intervention but we feel it is incumbent for us to do so. We trust the good
offices of the Chair and the Secretariat to purposely interpret the statement
and the mandate in the Tunis Agenda for the forum, particularly Article 73 which
requires that the IGF be democratic and transparent, and by implication,
includes all the attendant good governance principles. We therefore wish to
emphasize, given the serious concerns raised by the civil society, Internet
Governance Caucus on the composition of the advisory group that the Secretariat
in all its operations and executions of functions must not only be neutral and
transparent but must be seen to be so. Let me explain.  We support the proposals
for critical Internet resources to be included on the Rio agenda explicitly.  We
therefore believe it is inappropriate for people or institutions with vested
interests or otherwise to play a critical role in the Secretariat's operations
given the sensitivity and importance of this issue to developing countries and
civil society organizations. Even at this meeting there are critical roles
assigned to people with strong links to the institutions currently in charge of
critical Internet resources.  This is inappropriate and we believe that the
Secretariat should protect itself from any perceptions of a lack of neutrality.
To avoid being misunderstood and personalizing the matter, I am sure that the
individuals tasked with such responsibilities are above reproach and will
faithfully deliver on their mandate to the Secretariat.  I emphasize, it is a
matter of principle and is a call for adherence to the letter and spirit of the
multilateral Tunis Agenda. However, given the lack of balance and improprieties
alluded to by us and others, this does not sit comfortably with us, and we call
for greater prudence in substance and in form. The discussion on critical
Internet resources at the IGF must be a Frank and open debate, coupled with the
availability of institutions currently charged with governance to be present at
the IGF. I hasten to add that it is not sufficient to rely purely on the mandate
in article 60 of the Tunis Agenda.  The Tunis Agenda and the integrity of the
process requires adequate incorporation into the agenda of Article 65, as well
as there is no reason to limit the limit to article 60.  Article 65 bears
mentioning.  We underline the need to maximize the participation of developing
countries in decisions regarding Internet governance which should reflect their
interests, as well as in development and capacity building.  And we have heard
from developing countries regarding their interests on this. Therefore, we hope
to see institutions charged with critical Internet resources governance enter
the legitimate space of the IGF and engage in that forum.  And that the
perception and substance of the IGF is free from gerrymandering in the process
leading up to Rio, the agenda, or through any other means. Since the IGF is a
legitimate multilateral forum accepted by all, and in addition is
multistakeholder, there should be no constraints to discussions on this topic
and neither should there be any excuse for institutions charged with critical
Internet resource governance to be fully and unconditionally available to the
forum. We are repeatedly reminded that the current arrangements are
satisfactory, so full open and you unconditional participation by these
institutions is the acid test for these assertions. In addition, we hope that a
report regarding enhanced cooperation will be tabled and open for discussion at
the Rio IGF.  We look forward with further work with the Secretariat and
reiterate our openness to the Secretariat for any further elaboration on the
issues raised here.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Thank you very much for your comments, but I would say that I
find your comments about Secretariat depending on people who have connections et
cetera, et cetera, quite unacceptable.  There are two of us.  I don't think any
of us have any such connection.  This process has been run openly, transparently
and squarely.  And I think this type of language which alleges gerrymandering
and so on is completely uncalled for, at least as it app place to the processes
that we have been following for Athens or for the process here. And I can assure
you that the Secretariat consists of just Markus Kummer and one other person,
and that's me, and none of us have any connection with any such process. We are
here simply to facilitate this whole exercise. Can I call on the gentleman from
Fujitsu. Would you like to --


>>RIAZ TAYOB:  Yes, Mr. Chair.  I said I was available for clarification.  Let
me clarify, because this was not directed at neither you nor Mr. Kummer, but
it's the discomfort with the persons who are handling the online question and
answer.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Why don't you do it?  You do it?  No problem?


>>RIAZ TAYOB:  Well, I have done it, sir.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Do it.  I hereby request you also to join in, in monitoring
the online conversation, right now.  I am inviting you to join in monitoring the
online conversation, and you come up with, as others would, anything which comes
up on the online conversation which you think we need to know.


>>RIAZ TAYOB:  Sure.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Okay. Good. And I now call on the gentleman from Fujitsu.


>>SOGO FUJISAKI:  My name is Sogo Fujisaki with Fujitsu, Limited today
representing Nippon Keidanren, one of the major industry organization with more
than 1,600 corporate members in Japan.  I'd like to provide some comments and
reports regarding the event in Japan. We have been involved in the IGF process,
closely working with ICC/BASIS and other industry partners.  Mr. Masanobu
Katoh,an advisory group member, is heading the Keidanren's effort regarding IGF.
In order to raise the awareness of the IGF in Japan and participation, we held a
Tokyo IGF event on May 9th.  The United Nations GIIC, the Ministry of Internal
Affairs Communication kindly supported the event.  We had 180 participants, most
notably Markus Kummer, ICANN, ICC participate in the event from overseas. We had
multistakeholder participant at this conference, including very senior officials
from the Japanese government and national broadcasting company, and Adam Peake
from civil society. From the industry, the chairman of Toyota Motors and also
chairman of Fujitsu, Limited attended the meeting and emphasized the importance
of active involvement in the IGF processes. First, most of the audiences who
were not familiar with IGF issues but thanks to Mr. Kummer's kind keynote
addresses, many of them finally understood the development aspect of the IGF and
also the importance of an interactive dialogue among multistakeholders. We
learned very simple thing from that event; that is, learning what is IGF, is
always the starting point for future active involvement for anybody. The
Keidanren would like to pursue this type of promotion in Asia where the IGF 2008
will be held. And we will submit the summary of this event to the IGF
Secretariat soon. Internet governance covers a wide variety of issues.  That is
why sharing best practice and international cooperation are very important.
Regarding the best practices, we believe it is important to make such
information available to other interested groups by establishing database in
systematic way. Of course, we need to pay attention to the views from the
developing countries and small and medium-sized enterprises. In addition to the
development aspect, in Tokyo, we actively discuss the security issues and its
importance of creating trust and confidence through information sharing and the
international collaboration. On the topic of openness, there were exchanges on
how to strike balances between IPO and free flow of information, and
governmental process, self-regulation to ensure openness. Considering a
development focus and the capacity building aspect, Keidanren would like to
promote sharing of best practices and international collaboration on security
and openness as we prepare for the next IGF conference in Rio in November. Thank
you, Chairman.  Again, I appreciate Mr. Kummer's involvement in Tokyo. Thank
you.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  David Olive.


>>DAVID OLIVE:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  My name is David Olive, and like my
colleague from Fujitsu we wanted to take a minutes to talk about how we work
with many businesses and I.T. associations around the world to promote the IGF,
its consultations, outcomes and involvement in the process. We are pleased to
work with ICC/BASIS, and you have heard detailed comments from our
representatives concerning preparations for the Rio conference in November. I'd
like to just point out some of the other events that we're doing to help get
interest in and participation in the IGF process. As we reported in February,
the Global Information Infrastructure Commission, GIIC, which also hosted a
workshop in Athens, had IGF as a main topic of its annual meeting discussion in
London.  And this was led by Mr. Katoh of our company. In addition, before
coming to Geneva I was in Malaysia attending a conference of the World
Information Services Alliance, WITSA,  at a meeting in Malaysia hosted by the
Malaysian I.T. association, and again a major topic of conversation was the IGF
and its process. That was led by the I.T. association president from Kenya, Mr.
Wado (saying name) and also Mr. Kofi of the Bangladesh I.T. association. WITSA,
of course, will host a global public policy meeting in Cairo in November, the
4th through 6th, and this will also be a topic of discussion, status and
previews of the Rio meeting in our conference in Cairo. Fujitsu, through its
involvements, tries to encourage other groups to comment and provide input to
the IGF Secretariat through the Web site and directly on position papers.  And
in that regard, we are also a member of the information technology association
of America, ITAA, and they asked me to inform you that they are sending comments
as well on the agenda and Rio preparations. In conclusion, we at Fujitsu hope
that these additional efforts which complement the ICC/BASIS and other business
and multistakeholder groups are doing to raise awareness of and encourage
participation in the IGF that will produce a successful meeting in Rio. Our
members are most interested in the topic of access, information security, and
capacity building as well as using remote participation to encourage further
participation. I listened carefully this morning to the discussion, and I think
the multistakeholder forum with the flexible structure we have today is the best
approach for our preparations for Rio. The four themes with greater details and
the emerging topic section as indicated by our Basis colleagues is a good way
forward. Points made this morning by some are worthy of further discussion as
frank and constructive exchanges are key and hallmark of this consultation
process. But to begin to change our advisors, our format and our structure at
this stage may be counterproductive to our efforts to encourage interest in and
participation with members throughout the world at the Rio conference. So let us
work together to make Rio a success, and then we can evaluate how best to move
next steps forward for next IGF meetings. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  (Inaudible).


>> Mike.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  I have Canada, I have Adam Peake, I have Ayesha Hassan from
ICC, I have Thiru Balasubramaniam from the Knowledge Economy International, and
I have the representative of our African civil society, Madame Fatimata Seye
Sylla. Can I turn first to Canada.


>>CANADA:  Thank you, thank you Mr. Chairman.  Canada appreciates and by and
large agrees with the proposals made in the Secretariat paper which we believe
will lead to an even more effective IGF in Rio.  As Markus said, an Athens plus.
That plus can be achieved very well by deepening our discussions of particular
aspects of the four broad themes we started with in Athens. In this respect, I
would like to voice my support for the very helpful framework outlined by
ICC/BASIS this morning and also for the contribution of ISOC which I found
particularly thoughtful. We would like to express our sincere thanks to you,
Nitin, Markus, and to your extremely small team for all of your work on this.
Hike the speaker from the APC this morning, we believe that the Secretariat and
the multistakeholder advisory group are effectively serving the role that is
called for in paragraph 78 where it mentions a bureau, and I with mention it's
bureau with a small "B." We strongly agree with the sentiment widely expressed
this morning that the IGF needs to address the issues referred to in the forum
by the WSIS.  But I feel it is necessary to raise a note of caution. Going into
Athens, we were not sure what the Internet Governance Forum would be.  We found
it provided an environment where different stakeholders could talk together
about difficult issues as well as finding agreement on less difficult issues. 
And I think we have learned from that. We believe we are ready to move to a
deeper level as others stated this morning. But for Canada, I can say we do not
want to recreate the acrimonious atmosphere we faced in getting to the Tunis
action plan.  We believe we are now trying to put ourselves in an exploration
and solution-finding phase of the Internet governance discussions. I think there
is a shared perception that we will need to discuss critical Internet resources.
 I would say the same about the need to discuss Internet interconnection costs. 
Both of these consistent with the WSIS text. But in the interest of making
progress, I believe we should take those difficult issues on in discrete pieces.
 Perhaps this year we should tackle one of those contentious issues in real
depth and make an effort to create a genuine dialogue around that issue. One way
to do that is by talking about the issue from a real perspective, perhaps a
user's perspective, as Emily Taylor suggested. That approach makes sense to me,
because it will lead to a discussion grounded in reality rather than in some
commonly expressed now theoretical arguments. Dealing with issues in terms of
their real effects will allow us to enhance our understanding. I would even go
so far as to say that reality-based discussions are the only way that we are
likely to achieve an enhanced cooperation model among all the stakeholders. For
example, careful consideration of case studies with a view toward developing a
menu of tools that can be implemented by the appropriate stakeholders at the
appropriate national, regional, or global level is the best outcome from a
multistakeholder, collaborative and nonnegotiating forum such as the IGF.
Finally, we believe that it is vital to increase participation in the IGF,
particularly the participation of all stakeholder groups in developing
countries. Canada is taking concrete action to try to make that happen.  I am
pleased to say that we have been able to place $100,000 with the ITU to provide
fellowships to experts from developing countries to participate in the Rio
meeting. We firmly believe that our dialogue will be enhanced by the
participation of developing country experts in the discussions in Rio. We also
see this as a positive way of encouraging the ITU and the IGF to cooperate in a
very real way. I hope to see other stakeholders in this process finding ways to
join us in making concrete contributions to the effectiveness of the forum.
Thank you.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  May I take this opportunity of thanking Canada for this
contribution because it will certainly go a long way towards improving
developing country participation [ Applause ]


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  And in light of this applause I hope that others are
listening -- (Laughter.)


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  -- because that will help. Adam Peake.


>>ADAM PEAKE:  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.  Adam Peake.  I work for a
research institute in Tokyo.  I was also a member of the advisory group last
year, and I was one of the volunteers who helped take comments remotely, so I
must be evil, according to one of the earlier presenters. Back to the thought of
the bureau for a moment.  I am a member of the Civil Society Internet Governance
Caucus, and  in my view, the caucus does not in any way support the concept of a
bureau, and it is somewhat distressing that there is this misunderstanding that
we might do. My personal thoughts on this is that a bureau is the exact
structure that would take us away from this concept of multistakeholder dialogue
that is essential to the IGF and I think we have all supported.  A bureau would
be a mistake. Following on, and I mean bureau with a big "B" in that sense.
Following on from Emily Taylor's comment before lunch, I like the idea of
closely linking workshops to the main themes.  While also, of course, providing
opportunities for an open call for workshops on other issues.  I think we still
need to remain -- still need to maintain that opportunity for openness. I have a
question about the diversity theme, and this is really something I'm wondering
if people in the room can try to answer. A couple of weeks ago I was at the
local consultation in Japan that Mr. Fujisaki mentioned and one of the questions
on the panel and I am embarrassed to say I couldn't really answer the question
is what should we discuss under the diversity theme in Rio. I thought this was a
very good discussion on diversity in Athens but I really couldn't think of
anything to say about what we should discuss in Rio. And in terms of -- I mean
in terms of Internet governance and policy.  I think this is a fine issue for
(inaudible) and I think it's a fine issue for development in ICT, but I struggle
very hard to see how we are going to discuss further and find associated
workshops for this theme in Rio. So I think it would be great if we could have a
discussion about that.  I think that would be very helpful. About the issue of
critical Internet resources, I do think it's important that we discuss this, if
we can, as a main session issue in Rio.  I'd like to suggest that we perhaps
adopt an approach of trust and critical infrastructure. The Internet is still
relatively new, and it didn't develop in the government sphere. It's developing
and changing all the time, and I think if there's one thing we did learn out of
WSIS is that the Internet has definitely become critical infrastructure. Our
economies run on it and businesses depend on it, and I'm sure it's an essential
part of all of our ordinary lives. So I think the IGF has to be a place where we
can have a discussion about how the Internet work, how it will continue to work
and how we can have trust in it as an infrastructure that is becoming more and
more critical by the day. I do agree, however, with the comment that it's not
going to be of interest to the vast number of users of the Internet.  All the
same, it's obviously of interest to the people who have been involved in this
process to date, and I think it justifies a presence in our discussions. It's
also an essential element of the mandate of the forum. And I think that's it for
me.  Thank you very much.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  (Inaudible).


>> Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  I am Walda Roseman of Compass Rose International,
and I am speaking on behalf of ICC/BASIS.  We wish to respond to your invitation
to comment on other suggestions.  In particular, three structural or procedural
issues. We have been hearing here today, and actually since Athens, strong
support for the success of the Athens meeting. It is our belief that the IGF
advisory group and the work performed, of course, by the Secretariat were key to
the success to that meeting.  And when something works, it's our experience that
it's important to build on that foundation. So we therefore join APC, Canada,
and others on this point and oppose the proposal that we have heard by some to
establish a bureau. We believe, as well, that the open multistakeholder nature
of the Athens meeting provided the essential building block for its success, and
that it will similarly be critical to the success of future IGFs. Moreover, the
open exchange of information among all stakeholders planted many seeds for
growth, even since Athens, of new and enriched approaches to meeting the
challenges of expanding the benefits of the Internet to everyone. ICC/BASIS also
supports APC's suggestion that there be an annual dialogue among organizations
with responsibilities for aspects of the Internet.  This was, in fact, the
reasoning behind the ICC/BASIS proposal that there be a single reporting session
in Rio where Internet related organizations could update and engage each other
and the larger community in discussions. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Thank you. I have (inaudible).


>> Microphone.


>> Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I am speaking on behalf of the dynamic coalition on
open standards. The dynamic coalition on open standards, DCOS, was created at
the Athens IGF in November 2006.  Our mission is to provide government
policymakers and other stakeholders with useful tools to make informed decisions
to preserve the current open architecture of the Internet and the World Wide
Web, which together provide a knowledge ecosystem that has profoundly shaped the
multiplier effect of global public goods and improved economic and social
welfare. In that spirit, we welcome the joint statement made today by Argentina
and Brazil in favor of open standards principles. I.T. standards, although not
created by legislators, states or courts, create regulatory structures that
transcend international boundaries, affect numerous public-policy issues, and
impact developing countries and many stakeholders who do not have an equal voice
in their creation, management, or adoption. There are significant problems in
our global I.T. standardization ecosystem.  In many regards, ICT standards are
being privatized and there has been little public debate on this development.
Ultimately, this hurts consumer choice, equitable access, competition and
innovation. One point of evidence to the growing problems are the requests by
the People's Republic of China to the WTO technical barriers to trade committee
and the Asia-Pacific economic cooperation for these groups to review the issue
of intellectual property licensing in international I.T. standards. Another
point of evidence are the series of international policy oriented conferences on
the subject, such as the recent standards edge conference at Georgetown
University in the United States that explored the economic role of I.T.
standards and government policy responses. We believe that these issues are not
being adequately addressed, and that they are outside the scope of any existing
body. Thus, we believe they fit firmly within the mandate of the IGF, and we
continue to ask that the IGF work with appropriate groups, including consumer
groups and civil society, governments, the private sector, standards
organizations, and intergovernmental organizations to ensure that global ICT
standards ecosystem regains its health and its standards remain inclusive,
nondiscriminatory, and supportive of interoperability. We believe that a
continued thematic focus on openness and access is merited for the IGF in Rio.
We request that a DCOS representative speak as part of the general plenary
session. We would also like to host a break-out session to update attendees on
our work and widen DCOS participation. As per the synthesis paper from the last
IGF consultation, we believe that exclusive use of proprietary formats in
documents, the Internet cafe, Webcasts, are inconsistent with WSIS principles.
We urge use of truly open standards, those that are supported by a robust array
of competing applications, including open source-based applications, throughout
the IGF meeting. In order to help IGF in this cause and in preparation for the
Rio IGF, DCOS will hold its first formal meeting on July 9th in Geneva,
Switzerland.  This meeting will be devoted to reviewing the team's progress,
including key principles, current policy responses to competition requirements,
I.T. standards in ICT and an outline of best practices in countries to improve
competition and lower trade barriers in I.T. Part of our goal includes the
preparation of two documents ready for distribution in Rio, the first being a
paper on principles of openness in I.T. standards, and the second a paper on
best practices and implementation of open I.T. standards. On July 10th, the next
day, DCOS will host a briefing open to governments, press, and other interested
parties.  We've also created a new Web site that details our mission and
provides updates on our work on open standards.  And I can tell -- give you that
information after this meeting. On February 4th, some members of DCOS met
informally at the Yale Law School to conduct a stock-taking of activities at the
tail end of the Yale Information Society Project's Open Standards International
symposium. At this meeting, DCOS members committed to holding a session at the
Rio IGF that would present current best practices in government procurement
policies that support full competition in I.T. and a paper articulating our
platform's positions on principles of open standards. The members of DCOS are
grateful to the IGF secretariat, advisory board and all IGF supporters for their
thoughtful attention to the pressing issues of Internet governance, and we look
forward to a productive meeting in Brazil this November. Thank you, Mr. Chair.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  For those of you who were stumped, DCOS is dynamic coalition
for open standards.  So I just thought some of you probably didn't quite place
it.  So I'll just -- it's the dynamic -- it's one of the products of the Athens
IGF. Can I -- I now have madam Fatimata Seye Sylla.  After that, Australia, the
American Bar Association, Theresa Swinehart of ICANN, and Egypt.  And Ecuador.


>>FATIMATA SEYE SYLLA:  May I start? Thank you, Chairman.  I am Fatimata Seye
Sylla, president of a Senegalese NGO which uses ICT to educate young people and
also to support women in training, as well as for income-generating activities.
I am speaking in the framework of ACSISS, which is the African Civil Society on
the Information Society Summit.  We'd like to thank the organizers for this
meeting, for having given us the opportunity to participate.  And thanks to the
support of the international Francophonie organization.  We should like to
support the statement made by ISOC, as well as other civil society
organizations, concerning the participation of developing countries, with
particular stress on the continent which we represent, that is, Africa. We can
note here the lack of effective participation of African civil society, and
especially the women from this continent, in the discussions on Internet
governance, in spite of the communication mechanisms which have been put in
place. The main reason is a lack of competent resources in African civil
society, and especially among women.  The few persons who are capable of
contributing wear several hats and therefore cannot do everything that they are
capable of doing. There are extraordinary results that have been achieved.  But
who can access these?  We need to have -- you need to have the level of
education necessary, the means, as well as connectivity in order to participate.
 Most Africans to not have these prerequisites, however. However, there is local
expertise in Africa which would allow for the replication in the field, this
type of formation for targeted capacity-building in synergy with regional and
international actors such as ISOC, Diplo, ICANN, and others, and with the
support of governments, private sector, as well as development partners, in
other words, the usual actors who take part in the development of our continent.
This would allow for increasing the critical mass of African participation, in
general, and especially that of women, who would be potential actors of African
civil society for Internet governance, as well as for the implementation of the
Tunis Agenda in general. I thank you.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Thank you very much. Benin.


>>:Thank you. I am not representing Benin, but I used the Benin flag in order to
speak.  But I am from Benin.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  (inaudible).


>>KEN LOHENTO:  But I am from Benin.  And so it's important for me to point this
out to you.  So my name is Ken Lohento.  I am making the statement on behalf of
the CIPACO project, the West African organization in which I work.  We work on
ethical policies regarding new technologies in west and central Africa, but
we're based in Senegal.  I'm also a member of the civil society network ACSISS,
which works on the issues relating to these issues. I'd also like to thank Mr.
Desai.  I would like to thank Canada for their statement, and, in particular,
with regard to their support of developing countries.  I'd like to thank the
Francophonie organization, which allowed me to participate in this meeting and
other IGF meetings. It clearly appears that access is the most important issue
for Africa or for developing countries, in particular, Africa.  There are many
local issues regarding access, but it would be useful for the IGF to continue to
discuss the question of access.  It is important for all possibilities of
accessing the Internet be dealt with.  I'll just give some examples.  The
setting up of effective multistakeholder mechanisms in Africa and at the
international level; access to public information.  This should be promoted and
respected.  The possibility offered by radio association, which is new in some
parts of Africa.  The radio and Internet association should be explored.  It is
important for the liberalization of technology -- telecommunications be properly
dealt with to give an important place to the private sector for the creation of
services so that liberalization be well regulated. The open access should be
achieved through the improvement of infrastructure.  Multilingualism should be
stressed.  As you know, sometimes, in some developing countries, it is not easy
to include civil society in decision-making with regard to governance in
general. Finally, with regard to access, it is important to deal with this issue
so that the IGF be well-targeted so that there is no duplication. Now, as far as
security's concerned, it is important to ensure that the freedom -- freedom of
expression is not brought into question because of policies that are focused on
security.  We need to highlight the role of the IGF so that the conclusions can
be satisfactory to all players, especially developing countries.  The forum must
come up with concrete results to be useful.  Even though it might not be a
decision-making body, it should ensure that the IGF clearly lead to concrete
outcomes.  Perhaps we should further encourage dynamic coalitions to have
specific outcomes and especially for developing countries, remote participation
for persons who cannot attend meetings should be better promoted and ensured. I
should like to thank the secretariat for their efforts in ensuring remote
participation of actors.  But for the moment, we still have some technical
problems in ensuring this participation.  In particular, we need to see how we
can use all technologies so that we are not locked into any one particular
technology. The secretariat should have greater resources.  We noted last year
that there were several problems in that regard.  And these resources will help
the secretariat to better carry out its work and perhaps better contribute to
developing countries participating more actively and physically at meetings.
With regard to the draft program, it has been proposed that we have a speed
dialogue session.  It would be useful to ensure that this session be
well-prepared, perhaps to have a dry run before Rio.  It is important to ensure
that this session is not just an additional session, but that it can really
effectively bring about results. I thank you.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Thank you very much.  Sorry for shifting you so much further
to the east.  But Australia.


>>AUSTRALIA:  Thank you, chair. I'd like to make a contribution to give an
Australian point of view, which will include some positive comments about the
topics to be discussed, and also to offer some cautious reactions to some of the
ideas floated about process and structure at this meeting. First, on enhanced
cooperation, it's really a separate track from the IGF.  But I would like to
offer a different point of view from what's been heard so far. In our view,
enhanced cooperation was envisaged as a bottom-up process, not a top-down
process directed by the U.N. Secretary-General or by any particular agency.  And
we think it's important to give credit for what has been done.  We can look at
UNESCO, ITU, ICANN, and in cooperation with many other organizations, each of
these have taken steps to respond to the WSIS outcome and to work openly and
more constructively with each other. And the lack of a bureaucratic
superstructure should not obscure the good work that's been done. More can be
done, of course.  But the commentary has been almost uniformly critical and has
not given recognition to the efforts that have been made in these and in other
forums. Then I come to process and structure. With regard to the proposals to
add new structures and processes to the IGF framework, I must say that we've not
heard any proposals that are more attractive than continuing to work with the
present very open arrangements that we have.  We are genuinely pleased to see
your continued involvement, Chairman, and similarly appreciate the role of
Markus Kummer in the secretariat and the role of Switzerland for that. Of
course, we can learn from mistakes and we should look to make improvements.  But
we on the other hand should certainly not undo the very good start that was made
in the Athens process. Then to the question of topics for the next IGF. We agree
with all of those who have given general support to the four broad themes and
the various public-policy issues that arise under each of these themes. A number
of other areas have been suggested, and there's a real risk of overloading the
agenda.  But we agree that discussion can be more focused within those topics
and that all the topics mentioned in the Tunis Agenda, particularly paragraph
72, we all have our favorites, but they're all legitimate subjects for
discussion at the IGF. The challenge, really, is to select the topics that work
best for each forum and within the broad themes. We had expected, really, that
management of domain names and related issues would be discussed at the next
IGF.  There was some discussion in Athens, but I guess we always expected
further attention in Rio.  And we are happy to support that.  We think it can be
accommodated within the four themes.  My own preference, which is in line with
one of the suggestions from China, would be to include it in the main session on
openness, with more detailed discussion also in other side forums.  But I'm
happy to accept that other options may also be appropriate. I would say that
discussion should cover frameworks at both the national level and the
international level. We are interested in hearing more, for example, of the
framework that's been developed in Brazil.  I should say that since the Athens
IGF in Australia, we have completed our own review of the local domain name
administration, and we would be happy to share experience and lessons learned. 
I have to say, though, that from an Australian point of view, these are not the
most interesting or the most challenging issues facing government.  In fact, the
management of domain names is a rather dull issue in comparison with many
others.  Much more challenging issues have been raised that would benefit from
discussion in the IGF, and these include improving access, which always seems to
be number one; and then the problems that come with access, security and child
protection perhaps chief among them.  These are the issues that appear in the
newspapers every week and that represent real difficulties facing all
stakeholders, including the ministers in countries all around the world and the
various private sector and community interests that share those concerns. Other
issues are almost as prominent.  Freedom of expression is one of those.  So it
seems to us the key issue that will determine whether the IGF is judged to be
successful or not is the question of relevance.  We already have a clear view of
the many issues that are strongly felt by different communities.  The challenge
is to get the balance right so that no voice is stifled but priority is given to
those issues that are most pressing for the widest range of countries and
participants.  The focus on capacity-building and development is an important
part of getting that balance right, and the multistakeholder approach has real
value and deserves to be nurtured in this process. Thank you, Chair.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Thank you very much. Can I now turn to Henry Judy of the
American Bar Association.


>>HENRY JUDY:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  My name is Henry Judy.  I'm with the
American Bar Association, a single society association that is the largest
association of law office in the United States.  Most specifically, I am with
the section of business law, the largest section within the ABA.  Let me comment
on two levels. The first level is the level of practical organizational
arrangements, and the second is the level of the substance of the Rio meeting.
My practical comments deal with the matter of speed dialogues or speed
exchanges.  Markus Kummer, in his opening remarks, noted that the concept came
from the American Bar Association via the ITU. Speed dialogues can be organized
in various ways, but the description that I have seen in the secretariat's
material is typical.  It is a technique, and like any technique, it is more or
less useful depending on the outcomes that you wish. My experience is that it
has the following advantages:  First, it introduces a large number of people to
one another who might otherwise not have spoken to one another.  It is a great
networking tool, and it stimulates networking, and thus it would strengthen the
multiparticipant orientation of the forum. Secondly, it is a great equalizer. 
The great and the small are at the same table and must listen to one another.
Third, it forces people to speak crisply.  You do not have time for the extended
use of diplomatic code, euphemisms, and circumlocution. Fourth, it is useful for
synthesizing the state of opinion and emotion in the group. Among the downsides
are the following: First, it depends on each table having a reporter who can
represent the views at the table in the summary in a skillful and disinterested
manner.  It is not easy to find a Markus Kummer for each table. Second, it
requires a high degree of prior planning and instruction on the part of the
organizers as well as a high degree of compliance on the part of the
participants. Otherwise, it can become a confusing and unproductive exercise in
herding cats, if I may use the English expression. I have heard it said that the
likelihood that the technique will be successful is directly proportional to the
tendency of the group to start its meetings on time. Third, it tends to work
less well as the group becomes larger.  So I would conclude on this procedural
point with two general comments. First, I have never participated in such a
dialogue in a multilingual environment, and it is possible that if it is done in
such an environment in Rio, extra steps will be needed from an organizational
point of view. Secondly, on the whole, I would advise some degree of caution in
the use of this technique, and, at a minimum, a lot of careful prior planning.
On the -- as far as the substance is concerned, I would like to associate myself
with the comments of the Free Expression Online dynamic coalition earlier today
and with the point of the previous speaker from Australia as to the great
importance of freedom of expression in this connection. Lawyers, when they are
at their very best, deeply care about freedom, freedom of expression, of
association, of communication, all of the fundamental values that are deeply
embedded in U.N. documents, ranging from the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, to the statement of millennium goals, to the WSIS declaration, and down
to the theme of openness in the documents of this forum. In that regard, it is
disturbing to see that the Internet, which is and must continue to be a tool of
liberation, is being misused as a tool of exclusion, of repression, and even as
a weapon. We would express the hope, Mr. Chairman, that the Rio meeting could be
organized so that the themes of openness and security from misuse animate the
proceedings. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Your assessment of the speed dialogue is very helpful. The
starting on time -- the minute you said starting on time, I saw sudden loss of
interest, because that's one thing that never happens in the U.N.  So that's
something that will be difficult to work. I have Theresa Swinehart, Egypt,
Ecuador.  After that, (inaudible) commission for Africa, I.T. for justice, and
George Sadowsky.


>>THERESA SWINEHART:  Yes.  Thank you.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to
thank the opportunity to participate, first of all, in this public consultation
and the initiative taken by the secretariat and everybody to hold these kinds of
consultations.  I think they're quite important. I'd also like to thank the
secretariat and chair for all the work in preparation for this meeting.  I know
it doesn't happen on its own, without any effort. On behalf of ICANN, we'd like
to welcome and have listened to the output and comments up to date for making
the IGF successful for all, and, in particular, the need to address the
interests and important topics, and specifically also for developing countries. 
I think there's a wide range of topics that are important for making the
information society accessible to all, and some of those have come up in the
discussions to date. There's undoubtedly a wide range of issues, interests, and
topics that relate to the Internet's use and its success, and we've heard some
of those this morning. The four themes of access, openness, security, and
diversity we think reflect important areas, each of which have numerous
subcomponents that prior speakers have addressed. These themes themselves
identify and form an integral set of issues that address the different issues
that make up the Internet and its use by users.  They're important and they need
to be addressed in a multistakeholder approach.  And some of the issues of
interest that ICANN has responsibility may be subcategories of some of these
different areas.  But, again, there's a wide range of issues and a wide range of
subtopics that are important to address that all stakeholders have an issue
with. We look forward to participating in the upcoming IGF respective sessions
and welcome, in particular, the suggestion put forward in the secretariat's
draft program outline of having open forums for all major organizations dealing
with Internet-related issues to present and discussion their respective
activities.  We think this is a very good initiative.  We believe that this is
also a very important new addition to the upcoming IGF meeting and an important
piece of information sharing and will do our best to contribute towards that
process.  Thank you.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Egypt.


>>EGYPT:  I am pleased to take the floor on behalf of Egypt, and this is a
country which will host the IGF in 2009.  I would like to thank you for steering
these consultations.  I would like to thank Markus as well.  Thank you for the
opening remarks and for receiving all the proposals made by participants here. 
I don't know how you will be able to implement all these proposals which require
a lot of capacities.  We have listened with interest to the proposals that have
been made, as well as the points of view expressed, with regard to the subjects
that will be discussed in Rio and the participation of stakeholders.  I think we
need to be realistic in the preparation of that meeting.  In that context, I
should like to mention certain points. It seems to me that there are disparities
with regard to the objectives of the meeting.  From what I've heard from the
various speakers, it depends on the interpretation we make of the different
points.  I'd like to recall that the summit document was very detailed with
regard to the mandate.  And we think it is necessary to have some amount of
flexibility.  And this depends on the goodwill of the international community,
as well as the Internet community, with regard to the preparatory work. This
should be more efficient.  And let me say that I don't know what will come of
the suggestions and proposals that have been made today.  Will they be taken
into consideration in Rio?  Which body will transform these proposals into
something concrete?  This should be done so that they are in conformity with
what has already been stated in the documents.  And the Advisory Group should
also play a very specific role. I'd like to recall what you said during the
closing session in Athens, when you said that perhaps it would be preferable to
provide working documents in the -- at the Rio meeting that would be prepared
well in advance of the meeting.  I don't know if this is still on the table, but
I think it is a proposal which is practical and which is in keeping with
Paragraph 72 of the Tunis Agenda. Consequently, all stakeholders should have the
feeling that this forum effectively represents the points of view of everyone. 
With that, we should take into consideration the fact that at each stage, we
should move on the basis of preceding stages, and we need to work in keeping
with the objectives of the Tunis Agenda.  And this is totally in line with what
one speaker said.  I think the replies that you will supply, the answers that
you will supply, will answer our questions on aspects relating to the
preparatory phase. I think there is a consensus on the addition of certain
points with regard to the list adopted in Athens.  I think these should be taken
into consideration.  It will be necessary perhaps to have a setting to look at
these new questions.  And I would like to ask, who will make a decision on those
issues? Thank you.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Ecuador.


>>ECUADOR:  Thank you, Chairman.  I should like to start by adding my own words
of thanks to the secretariat and to you for leading this consultation over these
last few months before the meeting in Rio. First of all, I should like to
endorse the statement made by El Salvador on behalf of GRULAC as well as that of
Brazil and Argentina.  However, I should like to emphasize the fact that the
region has been making significant efforts, through its regional strategy for
the development of the information society, ELAC 2007.  And this regional
strategy has just included a permanent working group on Internet governance.
This group should have an active participation and constant coordination with
the process of Internet governance. This is why the secretariat should have more
close coordination with this regional initiative which has a focal point
throughout the region of Latin America and Caribbean.  These are working
actively on a number of issues which are drawn from the themes of the IGF, which
will be dealt with in Rio de Janeiro. Furthermore, and in spite of the fact that
interventions that are not from countries will not be -- well, we should take
account of the role of the civil society in substance and with regard to
procedures. They have significant views which should be taken on board. The
private sector, through its initiative basis, has put forward a number of views
which should be considered, and prior to Rio, these views should be examined at
the preparatory meeting as a step forward to the Rio meeting.  Subjects such as
geographical balance, the selection of the advisory group, are, I believe,
fundamental and should be dealt with clearly before the Rio meeting. The
advisory group has a considerable challenge before it ahead of the Rio meeting,
and that is to try to reflect the points that have been raised here in these
consultations.  Not only in the Rio program, but also in the procedures which
will be adopted in the future. Lastly, with regard to specific themes which
might be contentious when we come to discussion of these, this forum should put
these in a positive light that would facilitate the discussions and that would
allow us, in Rio, to move forward and make headway in the discussions on all the
themes relating to an Information Society that is more inclusive. Thank you.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  U.N. economic commission for Africa.


>> UNECA:  Thank you, chairman.  I thank the Secretariat, also the Internet
Governance Forum.  I thank Mr. Kummer within the economic commission for Africa.
We have established an African action plan on the knowledge-based economy. 
Internet governance is very important in this context, and we are working with
AfriNIC and AfNOG on our Internet governance plan. In Africa, we have been
holding consultations with the Egyptian government, and we have got a discussion
list which is ongoing to discuss the feasibility of having an African forum,
which we could establish.  We're discussing this now.  And we are planning to
hold a preparatory meeting for Africa before Rio so that we can discuss the
topics which will be debated at Rio. And we're going to come up with some key
elements for the African continent to put before the forum.  And our meeting
will be held sometime between July and September.  We're looking for a host
country at the moment.  We welcome all offers, of course. We'll tell the
Secretariat I know we have a venue and a date, and we would like the Secretariat
to participate. For Rio, we are going to be organizing together with ICANN and
the Diplo Foundation and the support of the CPRC Canada and OIF training for
French-speaking countries for Internet governance. A similar training course was
held in Addis Ababa last year for the English-speaking African countries, and
this time we are going to have one for the French-speaking African countries. 
And we are going to have this preparatory forum for Rio as well, as I just said,
which we will organize before October. Also, I'd like to inform you all that the
African network of the global alliance on ICT and development has been
inaugurated in Addis Ababa, and this network, which is called African Guide,
will be implementing a project on infrastructure and the community with support
from ITU and with cooperation from the Secretariat in New York. Thank you.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Robin Gross from IP Justice.  And George Sadowsky, then Iran,
and then Ralf Bendrath from the dynamic coalition on privacy.


>>ROBIN GROSS:  Thank you.  I speak on behalf of the A2K at IGF dynamic
coalition whose purpose is to support and expand access to knowledge and promote
freedom of expression in the realm of information and communication technology.
Our coalition is particularly concerned with the impact that unbalanced
intellectual property rights have on the Internet as a tool of free expression,
innovation, education, and development. A2K at IGF joins in supporting the
statement from Brazil and Argentina this morning to focus the openness theme on
fundamental rights and open standards, and the diversity theme on knowledge
production and sharing. Additionally, A2K at IGF recommends that IGF consider
the following three principles in preparation for Rio.  First, build freedom of
expression values into the law and architectures that support online
communication. The Internet was originally designed primarily for education and
communication purposes.  The ability to communicate across the globe without any
intermediary's interference, to seek out desired knowledge, and freely associate
with ideas and communities close to one's heart are at the core of what makes
the Internet such a powerful tool for development. These specific early
infrastructural design choices remain key to the Internet's contribution as a
global resource for knowledge and development. We can privilege the gap in the
digital divide by continuing to design the Internet with these ends in mind and
implement technical protocols and public policy choices that encourage the
Internet as a tool of unencumbered free expression and access to knowledge. If
we choose anything other than an Internet for development, we are building a
wall that serves to widen the gap between those with a wealth of information at
their fingertips and those starved for knowledge. Secondly, IGF can serve to
encourage open, innovative, and nonproprietary development models for building
wealth and knowledge.  A2K at IGF recognizes the importance of the Internet as
an incubator for innovative new business models that may not have been possible
in the off-line world. The spread of free and open-source software has led to
the creation of robust and commercially successful operating systems such as
Linux.  And future technologies promise to provide additional nonproprietary
solutions at an even more affordable and efficient rate. These nontraditional
innovations promote cultural exchange and diversity, and free up scarce
resources for other, more basic needs. The social and political value of online
discussion forums, Wikis, web logs and other peer-to-peer communication tools
are beyond question. Creative works, licensed under a creative comments license,
or other types of open content which permit greater sharing and incorporation
into future developments than traditional media outlets allow have significantly
increased the availability of online educational and cultural resources. IGF
presents a unique opportunity to explore the success of these models and
encourage their expansion into new areas and communities. As the power of the
Internet grows, the essential tools and businesses integrated with the public
domain resources become increasingly important for fostering innovation and
wealth, particularly in undeveloped communities. Without a shared recognition
that the public domain enriches everyone and creates value for society,
information policy cannot evolve to address the opportunities that cyberspace
presents. The Internet Governance Forum should address the status of the public
domain as it explores how the Internet can be maximized as a tool for access to
knowledge and as an Internet for development. It can also provide a platform to
raise awareness on the role of the Internet to provide universal access to a
robust public domain of knowledge and culture. The Internet revives the hope of
the ancient library of Alexandria.  If managed properly it will create a global
public resource for universal education.  But if managed for the benefit of only
a few industries, or outdated business models, we will lose this opportunity to
build a strong and robust public domain of shared knowledge. Third, and finally,
civil liberties should be a broadly considered, cross-cutting issue at the 2007
IGF meeting in Rio. Given the importance that basic human rights such as freedom
of expression, education, privacy, communication, scientific inquiry, access to
information, freedom of association, and anonymity play in the development of
humanity, the civil liberties implications of every topic addressed in Rio
should be considered to provide a more complete picture of the policy issues.
Respect for civil liberties should, therefore, be considered a cross-cutting
issue in all of the activities undertaken at Rio since positive development of
the Internet is dependent upon respect for the basic human rights of all
individual Internet users. There is a growing trend among international human
rights courts to specifically recognize access to information as part of the
freedom of expression rights enshrined in several human rights conventions.  For
example, in 2006, both the European court of human rights and the inter-American
court of human rights ruled that access to information is protected by freedom
of expression guarantees.  And in Europe, that right has been specifically
extended to cyberspace. In conclusion, A2K at IGF would like it hear from
speakers in Rio that will inspire the development of the Internet as a tool for
providing access to knowledge and freedom for all citizens, regardless of
national boundaries. Thank you.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  I have (inaudible).


>> Mike.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Sorry.  George Sadowsky, Iran, Ralf Bendrath from the privacy
network, and then I will turn to the three people who are monitoring the outside
input.


>>GEORGE SADOWSKY:  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.  I speak as executive
director of the Global Internet Policy Initiative and someone who has been in
the field of ICT for development for some time. I want to speak from a
development point of view, and as such, I will echo many of the previous
speakers, last being Ken Lohento, my (inaudible) colleague, and I would like to
support two related issues which you have heard about.  The importance of access
and the criticality of an enabling environment on a national level. And applying
bill Graham's criterion of reality-based discussions, I would note that I speak
from on-the-ground experience providing technical experience in over 50
developing countries. Access is absolutely critical.  We know that.  Without
access, you have nothing. You have no way to communicate, no way to access
content, no way to provide content, and no way to participate in processes,
democratic processes, e-government, e-commerce, all of the applications that the
Internet in particular allows you to do.  And I would like to align myself with
Emily Taylor's comment and suggest that 99.99% of the people who are interested
in the Internet don't care what we say in this room.  These are issues that will
affect them, and if we do our job well, it will affect them positively.  If we
don't, it will affect them negatively. They simply want access to ICT resources
so that they can do the job that they want to do for themselves, by themselves,
if they can. Now, access has a number of dimensions.  The obvious ones are is it
available, is it affordable, and can you access it geographically or otherwise.
There are also some not-so-obvious dimensions such as are there acceptable
guarantees of privacy on whatever you access so that freedom of expression is a
reality and not a figment of the imagination. There's also an issue of
bandwidth, and we know the comparisons between what you can do with narrow-band
access and what you can do with broadband access and the way in which the
Internet is being used clearly favors additional bandwidth, which is -- but
narrow bandwidth is better than nothing. Now, this leads to the criticality of
the enabling environment, because it's the enabling environment that will let
all sectors, including the private sector, which I regard as the primary driver
of the spread of the Internet, to do their job as they should. And the enabling
environment has multiple dimensions.  There's obviously telecom demonopolization
and deregulation.  There's appropriate legislation in other parts of the law. 
Regulation, licensing of ISPs, the alignment -- excuse me; I am having trouble
reading my notes here.  The degrees of freedom given to the private sector to
operate, but enough regulation to protect the public against possible excesses
on the part of any sector and this enabling environment is under the national
level and local level, and it makes the difference whether the Internet will
spread and whether people will get access. And if we don't make access in the
enabling environment, in particular, a major issue and examine it critically and
what can be done at the national level, then we do economic and social
development a real disservice in Rio and at future IGFs. I would like to make
one other comment.  There was an expression earlier regarding the possibility of
what I would consider undue influence by people who were associated with
organizations that have responsibility for critical Internet resources.  And
there is -- that is, by and large, true.  But why is that?  How could that
possibly be allowed to happen? And I suggest that there are a cadre of
individuals, a tradition in ICT, in computer science, and related fields, of
people who have a long history of wanting to take this technology, even prior to
the Internet, the growth of ICTs, the declining costs, the possibility of
applications was very real and incredibly exciting, and there were a lot of
people who were involved in other things who saw it and wanted to spend their
time bringing these innovations, bringing these extraordinary tools to
developing countries for purposes of economic and social development. 20 years
ago, you would have found them in the IETF or the IAB or in the U.N. system, the
specialized agencies doing this work. When the Internet society was formed in
1991-1992 some of these people gravitated to there because they thought the
slogan "internet for everyone" was a remarkably good goal that they wanted to
spend their efforts to achieve. And more recently they have affiliated with
organizations that have something to do with critical Internet resources. So
when you see people with substantial experience in ICTs in positions of giving
advice, just like we all do, to the Secretariat here regarding the Internet's
core resources, it shouldn't come as a surprise.  They are there because they
want the Internet to succeed in its mission of transforming the world. And is
there any possible reason to oppose their inclusion in such a role?  I think we
need a reality check here.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Can I now turn to Iran.


>> Iran:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and my apologies for asking for the floor for
the second time, but I needed to do that. I have to take you back, Mr. Chairman,
to an issue which was raised a while ago in the room. We had an interpretation
concerning enhanced cooperation and that prompted me to react to that
interpretation with your permission, Mr. Chairman. To our mind, IGF and enhanced
cooperation are two mutually supported -- supportive mechanisms to do the
follow-up for Internet governance. They go hand in hand.  And both are of high
importance for us, and I suppose for all the stakeholders. We would support IGF
within its own limits as much as we support enhanced cooperation. Yet we -- all
participating parties in the Tunis phase know well that it was a matter of a
balance that we arrived at having both IGF and enhanced cooperation in a
package, and it was the very last portion, I suppose, if you recall, the last
portion of the package that we agreed to in Tunis. So it is a matter of just
following the saying that says no one goes without the other. I have actually
nothing to add to the clarity which is already there in the Tunis document, and
just let me read some of them. First of all, on the question of if it is
top-bottom or bottom-up, and I don't want to discuss it at this moment, and I
think it is not wise to do so, enhanced cooperation is there according to the
Tunis document to enable governments on an equal footing to carry out their
roles and responsibilities in international public policy issues pertaining to
the Internet, and to the end of the paragraph. Secondly, according to paragraph
71 of the Tunis Agenda, enhanced cooperation consists of two segments, clearly. 
The one which was supposed to be started by the U.N. secretary-general involving
all relevant organizations by the end of the first quarter of 2006, to involve
all the stakeholders in their respective roles, to proceed as quickly possible,
consistent with legal processes and to be responsive to innovation. As we all
know, there has been -- and I think there is no doubt that there hasn't been any
movement in this regard.  At least we are not aware of it. The second portion of
paragraph 71, which is the second segment of enhanced cooperation, is the one
which relates to relevant organizations.  Who should commence the process
towards enhanced cooperation involving all the stakeholders, proceeding as
quickly as possible and supportive and responsive to innovation. I suppose this
segment has been the basis of the interpretation that we had a while ago.  And
what I would like to say here is we should avoid confusing these two segments. 
They are both part of the same body, but they are two segments, separate legs. 
But mutually related. Even on this segment we are not sure if such a process has
been started in any intergovernmental organizations like ITU or UNESCO.  And on
that, I was part of the negotiations of resolution 102 of the ITU
plenipotentiary conference in Antalya last November.  And just briefly I would
read to you what was the situation.  I think the same conviction was there for
people.  According to the section of that resolution, the plenipotentiary
conference resolves to instruct the secretary-general, paragraph number 4, to
take the necessary steps for ITU to play an active and constructive role in the
process towards enhanced cooperation as expressed in paragraph 71 of the Tunis
Agenda.  And this is the enhanced cooperation process which is supposed to be
initiated by this U.N. secretary-general.  And paragraph 5, to take necessary
steps in ITU's own internal process towards enhanced cooperation on
international public policy issues. So you see the same conviction is there,
even in other fora. I just wanted to clarify the situation, at least from our
point of view, that when we talk about enhanced cooperation, we should be very
clear what are the linkages with IGF from one hand and from the other hand the
two segments, mutually supportive segments of the enhanced cooperation one to be
started by the U.N. secretary-general, the other one, the one which is supposed
to be internally followed within intergovernmental organizations. I'm sorry to
take the floor for the second time. Thank you.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  I would like to clarify that this is not a consultation on
enhanced cooperation.  So nothing that you said -- not said here is not any --
so that will have to be something different. I have Ralf Bendrath from the
privacy dynamic coalition.  And then after that, the United States.


>>RALF BEUDRATH:  This is to provide with you a brief update on the work of the
dynamic coalition on privacy. We have met continuous interest since the Athens
meeting and now have participant from more than 60 entities, including
government, civil society, business and international organizations. The
coalition has participants from all world regions at the moment.  The fullest
and more information about the coalition, including an updated progress report,
can be found at IGF2006.info. Participants in the coalition have met in Geneva
in February 2007,  in Montreal in May just a few weeks ago, and again in Geneva
yesterday to discuss some issues we are focusing on and our prospective on the
Rio meeting. The major part of the work, of course, is being conducted through a
mailing list. Currently, the privacy coalition's work on substance is structured
around the following three main themes:  privacy and identity, privacy and
development, and privacy and freedom of expression. We have drafted charts and
issue papers on these three main themes which are available as drafts at the
coalition Wiki site I just mentioned.  These drafts will be refined and adopted
until the summer and submitted to the IGF as a contribute from the privacy
coalition. So much on our work. At our meeting yesterday we also discussed the
draft program outline for the Rio meeting.  We have some concerns and some
proposals and I will just go quickly through them. On the themes of the meeting,
the main themes, we notice that privacy is not mentioned at all in the whole
document, and that civil liberties and human rights in general are pushed to the
side.  We therefore strongly support and agree to interventions made before to
the idea that civil liberties and human rights would be added as another
cross-cutting issue. This would, for example, also mean including it in the
criteria for the workshops and also, of course, addressing it in all main
sessions. The security theme as it is described at the moment, and if it is to
stay, can certainly be improved.  First of all, it should address which is the
object to be secured.  The citizen, the consumer, private property, national
security, human rights, or what else. Of course, there are many more aspects to
think about in this context, and we from the privacy coalition are more than
willing to help here with ideas and expertise. On the format of the meeting, we
think to have a main session on emerging issues in Internet governance is
certainly a great idea, but we would suggest to have it at the beginning of the
meeting. This would be different from issues that emerged at the IGF, which, of
course, should be addressed at the end. Another thing, on timing, our members
will propose several workshops on privacy-related aspects of Internet
governance.  These and other workshops probably then should feed into the
coalition meetings that will also take place in Rio, which, in turn, should also
feed into the respective main sessions.  But this is -- timing will be relevant.
 And we just ask the secretariat to keep this in mind, that meetings and
workshops and so on can really feed into each other in a way that makes sense.
On the rollout mandate of the IGF, we agree that the IGF must move beyond a pure
discussion event and see how and if it can agree on recommendations and other
output.  We again refer to Paragraph 72g of the Tunis Agenda, which mentions as
part of the IGF mandate to make recommendations. We therefore suggest to have
the final IGF plenary consider any recommendations that may arise from the
ongoing work of the coalitions or from the workshops and discussions in Rio.
Thank you.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  United States.


>>UNITED STATES:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to make an intervention
based on a number of interventions given today promoting one type of software
over another. I would like to point out to stakeholders that paragraph 27 of the
Geneva declaration of principles promotes a technology-neutral environment.  It
says, "Access to information and knowledge can be promoted by increasing
awareness among all stakeholders of the possibilities offered by different
software models, including proprietary, open source, and free software, in order
to increase competition, access by users, diversity of choice, and to enable all
users to develop solutions which best meet their requirements." Of course,
stakeholders are free to debate the merits of different types of software within
the Internet Governance Forum.  In fact, perhaps such debates should be
encouraged.  However, my delegation believes that the IGF should follow the
patterns set by the WSIS documents in being a technology-neutral forum. Thank
you.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  I assure you that a novice like me will continue to use what
he can use.  So we will probably -- it will probably remain technology-neutral,
because a lot of us are technology-incompetent, so we will probably have to do
that. [ Laughter ]


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Germany.


>>GERMANY:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I'm speaking on behalf of the
European union again.  And I recall that you asked us here, the stakeholders in
the room in the morning, to comment on the questions, the main questions that
were put on the table by the different delegations. So we would like to deliver
a second statement. We believe, Mr. Chairman, that the IGF should continue to be
a forum for an open exchange between all stakeholders on public-policy issues
related to key elements of Internet governance.  In this context, there should
be no a priori exclusion of topics.  At the same time, we think that there is
value in following the structure of Athens with four main topics and
capacity-building as the overall theme. The management of critical resources, we
have seen the IGF in Athens addressing in various formats, for example, during
workshops.  The IGF also, at its upcoming meeting in Rio, is a well-suited
platform to continue to devote attention to this issue at the appropriate level,
obviously, as a discussion forum and not with an oversight function. Mr.
Chairman, the European Union strongly supports providing appropriate space for
dynamic coalitions in Rio de Janeiro to report on their work, as they address
important questions of direct importance for everybody, for everyday users,
including the example freedom of expression, privacy, and identity, and open
standards. We see the main benefit of the IGF in enabling an exchange among all
stakeholders on an equal basis.  The Tunis Agenda sets the framework for this by
outlining that the IGF should be a nonbinding process. Mr. Chairman, we attach
great importance to balanced geographic representation.  We think that the
existing preparatory structures have worked well and we commend, in particular,
the secretariat for its excellent work. And, finally, we support the
reconduction of the existing multistakeholder Advisory Group for the Rio meeting
for the sake of efficiency. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Okay.  I think we have heard a lot of people here.


>>:Microphone.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  I would like to hear a little from --


>>:Microphone.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  We've heard a lot of people from this room, but there are a
whole lot of people outside this room who have been following this debate. So
Markus has requested two of them and I have requested others to see if they are
monitoring some of these contributions. So I will ask the three of them just to
give us a quick sense of what are the types of questions, comments which are
coming in. Adam, would you like to start off?


>>ADAM PEAKE:  Yes.  I have one contribution where the person has sent e-mail
and asked that it be read out, so I will do that if I may. It's from David Allen
the COLAB CPR.  And he's following the meeting online. David writes: The chair
has asked for reflection on critical Internet resources as a topic.  It seems
the question is not whether, but when.  If that is correct, then the question
becomes, have the main parties something productive to add beyond the unresolved
positions already?  In turn, that will depend on whether IGF has created enough
foundation where the interested parties can engage each other successfully. When
the time is right, the question is how the parties engage and for what purpose.
Following Willie Currie's innovative attention for APC, where he suggested
intergovernmental dialogue, another option would be to invite a session jointly
organized by the collection of main actors and main governments concerned. Among
others, this could encourage further participation by governments, with their
multistakeholder colleagues, as Markus Kummer earlier emphasized. Give me one
second while I page down. More especially, Bill Graham's suggestion from Canada
begins to point to the form this could take, a discussion built around real
effects and case studies. And that's the end of David's contribution.  Thanks.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Thank you.  (inaudible).


>>KIEREN McCARTHY:  Hello.  Yes. I've been monitoring the chat room.  There's
not been a significant amount of chat and I'm not sure it's raised any questions
that are worth putting forward to the room at the moment.  However, I would like
to make a brief statement on behalf of a dynamic coalition if that's okay.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  That's fine.


>>KIEREN McCARTHY:  It's a quick statement on of what of the dynamic coalition
for online collaboration which I think will address some of the points that
people were raising a second ago. The coalition was formally announced at
February's consultation meeting.  Its broad approach is to identify effective
methods for online group working and participation and to evaluate the various
technical options that are available. Since February, the coalition has
developed a structure and a work plan in order to achieve as much as possible in
time for the Rio meeting.  It is hoped that the coalition will be seen by other
dynamic coalitions and the IGF secretariat itself, as well as other online
collaborative activities, as a useful store of information, knowledge, and
experience of online collaboration tools. The coalition will share its
experience and provide advice where requested on which tools are most effective
in which circumstances. Much of the coalition's advice will come in the form of
reports covering individual tools, although the coalition may also provide a
more formal report in Rio.  Full details will be available, will be provided to
the IGF soon -- the IGF secretariat soon, complete with the address of a new
dedicated coalition Web site. The coalition is open to all, so we would
encourage anyone who is interested in improving and aiding both online
collaboration and participation to sign up and get involved.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  (inaudible).


>>:Thanks for your openness and candor, Mr. Chair. I have nothing to report
since providing my details to the secretariat. While I have the mike, I just
want to express full confidence in the secretariat and yourself, chair.  But I
stick to the precise wording of our statement.  Thank you.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  The --  Are there any others? Okay. Let me begin first by a
word on something which is not the subject matter of our discussion.  And that
is enhanced cooperation.  I had reported to you a little earlier.  Basically, if
you look at the text of what came out of Tunis, unlike in the case of IGF, in
the case of enhanced cooperation, the process was not specified.  It was just
said, "Launch a process." Nothing more was said as to what sort of process or
what was expected.  There's absolutely no indication given, unlike in the case
of IGF, where it's very clear, where there's a whole long paragraph specifying
terms of reference.  A lot of things were specified in the case of IGF. So,
essentially, what the Secretary-General did was to start a process of
consultation, which we did.  For six months, I personally met with people to
find out whether there could be some basis, some common ground which could be
found for a process, leaving it very flexible and elastic as to what this
process could be. And, essentially, I have sent the report of that to the
Secretary-General, the then-Secretary-General.  And the fact is that there isn't
that common ground as yet. So I think we'll have to try something different, a
different approach.  So let us see. At the moment, the -- as you know, there is
a certain state of change in New York, not just in terms of the
Secretary-General, but even the key department which is handling this, there
will be a change at the end of June.  So I -- and perhaps that may lead to
certain movement beyond that point. But the real difficulty that we face there
is the fact that nothing more was said beyond the word "process."  Unlike in the
case of IGF, where, in a sense, the marching orders are reasonably clear.  There
was not that much scope for modification, interpretation, and so on. So what we
did was essentially a good offices function.  And as you know, in diplomacy, the
best you can do in good offices is provide those good offices.  You can't
necessarily assume that they will lead to a successful result. But I do accept
that this is an area where we will have to ask ourselves, what do we do, at some
point. Let me turn now to the subject of our discussion, which is the IGF
meeting itself.  And let me, since perhaps there's been a little more discussion
on issues of how it is organized and process issues than before, I would like to
clarify one thing, which is that the Advisory Group has been constituted by the
Secretary-General simply to advise him.  It does not really have any other
legislative basis than that. We could have done everything that we did without a
formally constituted Advisory Group, simply by consulting those individuals
individually as a U.N. secretariat. But we chose to constitute it as an Advisory
Group precisely because we felt that it was important to get people involved in
the process who were connected with the broader community from which they came. 
And that is why in both the original working group which was constituted, the
subsequent group which was constituted for Athens, the group which will be
constituted now, fairly extensive consultations have taken place, with missions,
with stakeholder groups, before the Secretary-General takes a decision. In fact,
one of the reasons for the delay is that this time, there are also extensive
consultations taking place in New York, not just in Geneva, but also in New
York, there have been extensive consultations. But nevertheless, however widely
we can consult, I would accept that this is simply a group constituted by the
Secretary-General to assist him.  That's it.  It is not like a bureau in the
usual sense of the term.  It does not have any status other than a group
advising the Secretary-General. I, too, am only an advisor to the
Secretary-General.  I don't have any executive responsibility in actually
deciding this, that, or anything. Sorry, Brazil, did you want to comment before
I -- no.  I was trying to conclude.  Would you like to comment now?


>>BRAZIL:  Yes.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Okay.  Please.  I will hold.


>>BRAZIL:  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.  I didn't mind to interrupt you,
but, as you said, you were coming to a conclusion, I think it would be perhaps
the appropriate idea to provide some additional input precisely on the point
that you just mentioned. As the host country of the next IGF, we are following
this discussion with particular interest.  And we are willing to contribute to
the achievement of the aspirations of all stakeholders at the Rio meeting. We
are aware that the IGF, due to its format, its procedural mechanism, and to its
participation criteria, presents itself as an innovative process.  So creativity
and innovation is required from us if we are really committed to the fulfillment
of its mandate. Now, if we see the IGF as a process that started in Athens and
is aimed at the last meeting four years from now, and we -- I think it is
understood that it requires each time a certain fine-tuning or refinement of its
agenda, of its format, of its structure and process. So one of the refinements
that perhaps is needed for this next meeting in Rio is the establishment of a
structure that would support the chairman of the IGF in conducting the meeting.
Now, as you said, the Advisory Group is to provide advice to the
Secretary-General in organizing the meeting.  And that's perfect.  But who,
then, will help the chairman in conducting the meeting? So the Advisory Group
had a fundamental role in preparing for Athens, and its work is commendable for
the success of the Athens meeting.  But it had at the same time no role at all
during the Athens meeting. So one possibility that we perceive as becoming a
strong demand is the possibility of having some sort of conclusion or report of
the meeting, which is, of course, understood to be nonbinding because of the
nature of IGF itself.  As in many other international fora, there is always the
possibility of, for instance, a chairman's report.  But the chairman alone would
not have the required legitimacy to prepare such a report without the help of a
representative, multistakeholder, and regionally balanced group. So how do we
call such group?  Friends of the chair?  Bureau?  Supporting committee?  I think
that there are many options. What we believe is that we need to have this kind
of support.  Otherwise, the chairman alone will not be able to deliver to the
expectations that are already created by the international community. So we
would encourage very much that in this preparatory process, we further discuss
this necessity, which we believe is vital to the proper conduct of business in
Rio and in subsequent meetings. Now, as I -- I'm having the floor, I would also
like to add that on the program, I would like to bring forth the need that
relevant organizations, like ICANN, ITU, and others, take active participation
at the Rio meeting, not only to exchange information about what they are doing,
because we are all aware of that already, or are supposed to be, but, rather, to
join in a substantive discussion on a particular issue that is relevant to
public policies.  For instance, their present and future role as part of the
international structure of Internet governance in light of the WSIS outcomes. Or
another example, how they are dealing with public-policy aspects related to the
management and security of the domain name system, or to the administration of
critical resources.  Or any other theme to be agreed by us, in the spirit of
paragraph 72(B). Well, these were my comments for the moment.  And I appreciate
you for giving me this opportunity before concluding. Thank you, sir.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Thank you.  That's good.  And I wanted to avoid getting into
a situation of debate, because we do have time.  We have two more days of
discussions.  So I just wanted to clarify. Let me, therefore, stress that this
is -- the group has -- and part of the reason --  Can I perhaps leave it for
later?  Because if I keep getting interrupted, then, I'm sorry, we'll just keep
continuing.  But, nevertheless, let's listen.


>>SAUDI ARABIA:  Thank you, sir.  Thank you for giving me the floor.  I have two
comments. The first comment, I heard that there should be solutions to the
matters which will be discussed in Rio, otherwise, we will not be able to
discuss them.  And I believe that the discussion of these issues in Rio will
certainly allow us to find solutions to these matters.  This is one point. The
other point is that you -- the point you don't want me to raise, regarding
enhanced cooperation.  I believe that both the forum and enhanced cooperation do
not have specific details as to their mandates.  However, there are certain
salient points.  If we take, for instance, enhanced cooperation, we see that the
main theme for enhanced cooperation is to enable governments to draw up
international public policies for Internet.  And it is quite clear who should
initiate the process.  This process should be initiated by the
Secretary-General. The idea is that the process should start, and during the
process, we can develop the details, as was done during the forum.  In fact, I
was reassured when you mentioned that this matter will be revisited and will be
dealt with in a comprehensive manner. Thank you.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  In any case, I don't wish to get into a detailed debate on
this, but there is a difference between the terminology.  The word used in the
second case is just "launch a process."  The word used in the first case is
"summon a meeting."  There's a big difference in diplomatic terminology between
these two phrases.  That was the problem. We are not discussing enhanced
cooperation.  And let me revert back to what we are discussing. Basically,
please, remember this, that part of the motivation behind this group is
something which George Sadowsky referred to.  We are working and preparing for
this with very limited secretariat.  It's just Markus Kummer, with whatever help
he can mobilize.  Chengetai is there right now, and sometimes he has an intern
or two.  And that's it.  Nothing more is available. So to some extent, let me
assure you that what the group was doing --  And, incidentally, it is not true
that the group did not do any work in Athens.  They did a lot of work in Athens.
 And we, frankly, could not have done Athens had it not been for the unpaid
labor that we got from this group.  All of them pitched in, in different ways.
And part of the contribution that they make is simply in terms of being able --
having access to a group of people who know what the issues are, who can help in
actually just the simple process of actually running a meeting, not deciding
this or deciding that, just the simple process of actually running a large
meeting with lots of parallel events going on. And I would like to recognize the
enormous amount of work which all of them did, totally free, for the U.N.  And
because the U.N. does not have the resources to support this process with a
reasonable size secretariat. So the role of the working group, the role of the
Advisory Group has been a very supportive one, a facilitative one.  And I am
absolutely convinced that we could not have done the Athens meeting without the
commitment -- not just the advice, the commitment, and the hard work which was
put in by all of the members of the Advisory Group. It is not a political group
in that sense, in the way in which bureaus are political.  But it is a group
which is vital to the success of that meeting.  It is a group which was put
together carefully, with some thought for reasonable balance, for balance
between different groups.  People will have complaints saying that there are too
few of this group or that group.  And that will always be the case when you have
a limited membership body, that somebody will feel that they should have been
there when -- but, by and large, it was a group which was put together by a lot
of consultation and discussions. I'm stressing this because in some ways, we
will be working with a similar structure for the Rio meeting.  But I do
recognize that there are questions of a longer-term nature, looking at the five
years of meetings ahead of us, which does require us to look at how this meeting
is organized, what its outcome is, a dimension that was just mentioned by the
delegate from Brazil that it's okay, you have a group that assists the
secretary-general.  But what if the Chair wants support?  Where does the Chair
get that support from? And do we simply say the Chair relies on whatever the
Secretariat can mobilize or is there some elasticities there? These are issues
which I'm sure we are need to look at and consider. So there are, I think,
clearly questions about the way in which the organization of this meeting is
structured which we will have to address. There are also deeper questions about
IGF which one should ask.  The nature of the substantive preparatory process. 
So far we have relied largely on a meeting like this -- or before I go on, let
me just say that in terms of the actual advice which gets passed on to the
secretary-general, I will say from my experience now that the meeting which is
most influential is this open consultation.  That even for Athens, it was the
open consultation which basically defined the structure and the parameters of
the meeting, including the themes. And the role of the advisory group was more
the fine tuning, the actual scheduling and this and that and trying to shape it
into some coherent plan. But the actual structuring and thematic or development
of principles of the Athens meeting were really set by the discussions in this
open consultation. And I think you will find it even in the case of Rio, your
experience will be very similar. This is in some ways the most influential body,
and it is totally open.  The door is not closed.  Anybody is free to walk in and
contribute and listen. So the actual process of fixing this, how the
secretary-general finally issues an order saying this is the meeting that will
be held on such and such date, these will be the themes, et cetera, the body
that is most influential in shaping that is this open consultation. And I'd like
to you keep that in mind. The role of the group is -- because moving from a
discussion like this to actually putting down for or five pages of paper with a
schedule, with titles for the themes and things like that is where the group
starts coming in. And then the group helps in the actual running of the meeting.
 Because you need -- you just need bodies, basically.  You just need bodies.  So
please, somebody has to manage all of the events which are taking place in that
hall. Markus can't be around all over the place. So this is what they do. So I
would urge you to keep a sense of balance about the role of the advisory group.
The real role is of this large body which meets regularly.  And that is why we
always persisted with the process of this open consultation.  And again, when we
meet in September, we will have this open consultation.  We have always had it. 
We had it for the working group and we always had it after that, because this is
our substitute for the process.  In the sense, this is what lends it a certain
legitimacy and credibility. That what the secretary-general finally ends up
doing at the meeting in terms of themes and so on is something which has been --
does not come as a surprise to the member states, to the different stakeholders.
 That is basically what the purpose of this whole exercise is. There have been
questions which have been raised about participation of different groups,
different countries, et cetera, in the whole process, and I would say that I'm
sure we could take that into account.  I give you an invitation now. 
Particularly in terms of the participation in panels.  Send names, send names. 
Because the only way we can assure regional balance is if we have a roster.  We
need a roster of names so that we can get the regional balance.  So just send
names.  But don't expect that every name sent will be there, because we also
want smaller panels so we can't possibly include everybody.  But it will help us
to get names, because then it allows us to ensure balance and so on. But I do
accept that beyond this, we have to keep thinking about issues of process.  Can
we rely simply on this open consultation type modality or do we need something
more than that?  Do we need something more structured to prepare for an IGF?
Unlike other U.N. meetings, there's no preparatory process in a substantive
sense here. Now, one thought, which I just want to place before you as a
possibility, if there are hosts, if there are people available is the
possibility of regional meetings.  This was mentioned, the fact -- the regional
exercises which are underway in Latin America.  But we could have them in other
places. So is it possible to think in terms of encouraging regional meetings
which will also be multistakeholder which could then feed into this process. 
Because it also would address one issue which has come up again and again here,
and that is the contribution and participation of people from developing
countries.  To run three, four, global preparatory meetings does not help
developing countries.  They don't have the resources to participate in global
meetings, but it is possible, perhaps, for them to participate in regional
meetings, which would be much less expensive for that whole process. So can we
think of that.  Obviously we don't have time for the Rio conference but maybe we
can think of it for the next one. So I think one of the things we may need to
think through a little more, maybe we will revert to this issue in September
when we meet, is do we need a stronger sense of substantive preparation as we go
into a meeting.  It will all have to be done on a voluntary basis because we
don't have a budget line for this.  But I have a feeling that for regional
meetings, it maybe possible to mobilize support and so on.  So we can try and do
that. There is a whole question of outcomes.  I appreciate the concern that you
cannot run a big meeting like this simply as a talk shop.  It must be something
which is seen to have an effect on something. And yet, the IGF is not a body of
people.  It's an event. So when we say the IGF must have an outcome, what do you
mean?  An event doesn't have an outcome.  It's a group of people.  There is no
defined entity there which you can say decides that this is a resolution or a
text.  Who decides?  The people present in the room?  Who negotiates? There is
no basis for this.  It's not like our intergovernmental process where we know
who has a right to sit at the table to negotiate. There are no rights in that
sense defined in an IGF process.  So do not walk into this lightly, because you
have to think through these issues as to who -- if you are going to have
outcomes, then who is going to decide this?  If you are going to have agreed
recommendations, who are the people who will have a right to sit at that table? 
To recite this?  Because we do not have a membership defined for IGF, because we
only defined it as an event. And in a multistakeholder environment, there is a
genuine problem in talking in terms of membership. Are you going to say all
those who are present?  Then let's be very realistic.  With the
underrepresentation that you will always have, continue to have from developing
countries, all those present will probably give you a geographically unbalanced
mix.  It will also vary depending on where the meeting is held.  The meeting is
held in India, you will get heavy representation from India and maybe very
little from Africa or Latin America. The meeting is held in Africa, you may
get.... So I'm not sure that we have talked through these issues.  But I
appreciate the concern. Now, in Athens one thing happened.  The dynamic
coalitions came.  It was at least something more than just a talk shop. 
Something came out of it which had some actual results. Maybe we can look
further and see how the strengthening of a chairman's summary which was
mentioned maybe a different, another type of thing.  But at the same time we
must recognize that this is not a forum designed for negotiating text or
outcomes.  It is not designed for that. There are other spaces and places where
this can be done.  But the IGF is not really designed for that. Its influence
has to come through its -- the one thing it has, which is that it is bringing
together people who do not otherwise meet with each other.  This is the message
that I got from Athens, from a lot of people who attended, saying we found
ourselves talking about issues with people with whom we do not discuss these
issues normally. That, I think, is its selling point.  That is its strength. So
it's very important that whatever we do in IGF, we maintain its multistakeholder
character. That is its real strength. Because for individually, people have
other forums.  Governments have many fora in which they can negotiate and
discuss these things. So does civil society.  So does industry.  So does the
Internet community. If they just want to meet amongst themselves, they do not
need the IGF. If governments want to meet amongst themselves, they do not need
an IGF. The IGF makes sense only if there is value in people meeting across
these boundaries. And in this particular case, it's terribly important, because
the nature of the medium is such that because it develops in a bottom-up
fashion, because it developed essentially outside the framework of governmental
infrastructure provision, this is an area where bringing together people from
these different segments, the Internet industry, the governments, the civil
society, and so on, becomes very, very crucial.  You will not be able to address
issues of things like Spam or cyber security and issues of that nature unless
you have all of these actors at the table.  It will not be possible to address
these issues unless you have all of these actors. So use that strength. But I
appreciate the concern that it has to become more than a talking shop. Without,
at the same time, becoming a negotiating forum, because it cannot become a
negotiating forum.  It was not designed for that.  It has no mandate for that.
So let us explore ways. We had some movement in Athens when we talked of dynamic
coalitions.  Hopefully we will get something in Rio.  So we will try and keep
moving and see how we can keep improving the setup. The themes.  I will say that
the one message which comes across to me is that there is an expectation that we
will be discussing issues relating to Internet core resources in the main
session.  This has come, some people have talked about it as something they
definitely want.  Quite a few have said that they are more or less reconciled to
the fact that it will be discussed.  But the general sense I get is that there
is an expectation that this will be discussed there. I think one of the
challenges that will be faced by us for the next two days is to flesh this out,
how.  There are several suggestions which have come on how best this can be
done.  And I think one of the challenges is to see how is this done. But I think
it's important that we recognize the signal, this message, which is what I take
away from this, that there is a -- there are many other things that have been
said about the other themes, which I'm sure we have taken note of, of which we
will again look through a little more carefully. One lesson that I derived from
Athens is that we must try and focus.  We must -- We cannot do everything at
every meeting. Unfortunately, we haven't done what was suggested by Iran which
is a multi-year program of work.  So we could say, okay, we are not planning to
talk about this in Rio because we are planning on talking about this next year
in Delhi or the year of that in Cairo.  But unfortunately, we don't have that.
So there is therefore often a tendency to put everything in every year.  But
let's try to avoid that.  And perhaps one way of avoiding it is by focusing on
topicality. Within each area, let us pick the themes which have become of
particular concern during the course of the year. Markus mentioned one, the
distributed denial of service attack, and how do you cope and live with it. 
Now, this is something which has happened and it's worth asking.  Okay, what are
the mechanisms which can prevent it? So I think this is one of the challenges
that we face of trying to be a little more focused in our discussions under the
individual themes. But I do take the message that in addition to all of the
themes that we had listed in Athens, there is an expectation that there will be
a discussion of a theme relating to Internet core resources. And different
suggestions have been made on what exactly should be covered under that.  And we
will, in any case, be reverting to that when we meet in September. There are
many issues that were raised -- not issues, but I would say suggestions that
came about the structuring and organization of the meetings. I think they're all
very helpful suggestions.  I'm, incidentally, not, Markus, entirely persuaded
that speed dialogue is well-designed for the U.N.  I am not persuaded that we
have the culture or the capacity to actually run a speed dialogue, particularly
because of the multilingual nature, the need to preserve a certain degree of
diplomatic protocol in our work.  So I'm not very sure.  But we can -- nothing
need be ruled out.  We can probably try it as an experiment rather than as an
integral feature.  Let's attempt it somewhere.  And if it works, we'll pick it
up.  If it doesn't work, we'll chalk it up as a bad idea and forget it for the
future. The most important thing that I would like to stress here is that the
IGF as a multistakeholder forum will not work unless there is a certain cultural
change everywhere. Governments, for instance, will have to become ready to
accept that when they are participating in the forum with NGOs and the others,
some of the statements made, language used may be a little more vigorous than
what is normal in diplomatic life.  But at the same time, I think NGOs will have
to accept that their normal sort of tendency to sort of put a point vigorously
because that is the only way you could make an impact when you are participating
an as observer, may have to change.  Because now you're going to be talking to
people with whom you are -- as an equal.  So it has to be a two-way exercise. 
It's not just that the governments have to become more tolerant.  I think it's
equally important that the others in civil society also have to become a little
more flexible, more tolerant, not necessarily given to the way they would --
have in the past operated, out of necessity, because that's the only way they
could get attention, was by being outspoken, vigorous, sometimes even rude.  But
that has also to change. And equally, I think there are changes required in
industry, amongst international organizations.  So I think there are -- it's the
cultural change which is going to be the most difficult to realize. Overall, I
think there must be a level of trust.  There must be a level of trust and an
acceptance that the people who are participating in this are doing so out of
sincerity, and are doing so honestly.  Ad hominem arguments saying someone is
doing this because so-and-so is from X or from sector Y must be avoided.  That
is not a dialogue of good faith.  And that is why I objected very strongly to
the statement which came from one person, which was an ad hominem argument about
individuals.  And that, I don't think, is on.  And the idea that you can somehow
have -- and incidentally, nobody is under judgment here.  This is not a judicial
body which is adjudicating whether X is doing his job well or Y is doing his job
well.  This is not our job. Our job is to find common ground for action amongst
different stakeholders.  And, to me, it seems that this is the greatest
challenge that we face.  The challenge is not structure.  The challenge is not
even the selection of themes.  The challenge is to be able to run a
multistakeholder process as a dialogue of good faith, where we come, we respect
other people's right to have views which are different, we treat them as people
who are holding those views honestly and are articulating them honestly and do
not dismiss anything on ad hominem grounds at all. So this great change that has
to come about, which is probably the greatest challenge that we face.  I
personally found that the discussions that we had were very valuable, very
fruitful.  Kieren here was probably expecting me to come up with yet another
nuptial analogy.  So let me give you my nuptial analogy.  After all, last time
was the first meeting of the prospective partners. Now this time is the second
meeting.  And the good sign is, they've already started quarreling about which
restaurant to go to for a meal.  So on that happy note, do you need to comment
now or can I close the meeting? Please.


>>GREECE:  Thank you, Mr. President, I'll be very short.  I've heard the word
"Athens" so many times and the word "success," and I'm tempted to take the floor
very briefly, first of all, to say that you cannot isolate one particular
ingredient for what happened in Athens.  It was a highly cooperative effort and
everybody played their part.  And that's what's important I think for Rio as
well.  There were long hours put by everyone.  And I also share your feelings
regarding the Advisory Group. I had one stakeholder approach man tell me, "Well,
you did an excellent job in organizing the meeting, but you did not keep a high
political profile." So my answer is that, first of all, I think that we were
members of the Advisory Group, and we noticed that it captured the spirit of
Tunis as to what exactly it wanted to happen in Athens.  So we didn't intervene
because we think that things went very well there.  And also, our positions were
covered throughout the process by the presence of the European Union. So we
concentrated on organizing and giving a good meeting.  And I want to thank
everybody who thinks and mentions the fact that it was well organized and well
done.  And that was it. Thank you.


>>CHAIRMAN DESAI:  Thank you very much. And I have absolute confidence that next
year, when we meet to prepare for the meeting, I will hear that same speech from
our Brazilian host.  Thank you very much. [ Applause ]