Excellencies,
Sir, Madam,
Dear Colleagues,

As you will recall, the Secretary-General was asked by the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), held in Tunis last November, to convene in an open and inclusive process an Internet Governance Forum (IGF) for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue. I have been asked to organize consultations on the convening of the IGF and I am now pleased to invite all stakeholders to attend these consultations, which will take place in Geneva on 16 and 17 February 2006. The meeting will be chaired by Mr Nitin Desai, the Secretary-General's Special Adviser for WSIS, who will assist the Secretary-General in preparing the convening of the IGF.

The meeting will take place in Room XVIII of the Palais des Nations. Interpretation in all UN languages will be provided. The schedule on both days is as follows: 10 -13 and 15 - 18 hours.

We have created a website to support this consultative process. More details on the consultations, including a draft agenda, are available on this website, which is still under construction: http://www.IntGovForum.org.

All stakeholders are encouraged to submit written contributions as an input into the consultations. Contributions will be posted on the same website.

We are aware that this meeting is called at unusually short notice and apologize for it. We had originally planned to hold the consultations in late February, but learned that all hotels were already fully booked in the entire Geneva area at that time, because of the Geneva Motor Show which opens on 2 March. The dates finally chosen were the only available alternative on this side of the April holidays.

Yours sincerely

Markus Kummer