The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Secretary-General, the Japanese Yoshio Utsumi, underlined, during a plenary session of the ITU 2002 Plenipotentiary Conference (PP02), on 25 September, about the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), the voluntary financial contribution of Portugal, 30 thousand swiss francs (approximately 21 thousand euros), for the respective organization.
This plenary session was critical in its evaluation of the preparatory works of this Summit, which will be held in two phases, in 2003 in Geneva (Switzerland) and 2005 in Tunes (Tunisia), sponsored by the UN and organized by ITU, its specialised agency for telecommunications.
In the reports submitted by the Secretary-General and the Russian coordinator of the ITU Working Group on the WSIShttp://www.itu.int/council/wsis/wsis_WG.html, Yuri Grin, and during the debate that followed, there was clear distress with the result of the WSIS Preparatory Committee 1 (PrepCom1), which was held in Geneva, between 1 and 5 July and he was unable to define the themes to be discussed in the Summit.
Taking into account this delay and the growing dissatisfaction with the difficulty in reaching a consensus on the themes for the meeting, PrepCom2 anticipation was announced - initially foreseen to March - to February 2003 as well as the realization of PrepCom3 in September of the same year. It was also reinforced the need of complying with the parameters established by the UN General-Assembly, that is, the opening of the participation to Non-Governmental Organizations, private sector and civil society in general, and the complete approach to the universe of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), including also the world regulation issue and not only of public help to development.
The preparatory process will also consist on meetings at the regional level, the European meeting being scheduled to 7-9 November 2002, in Bucharest, Romania.
For further information see:
http://www.itu.int/wsis/index.htmlhttp://www.itu.int/wsis/index.htmlhttp://www.itu.int/wsis/index.html
http://www.itu.int/wsis/index.htmlhttp://www.itu.int/newsroom/pp02/index.htmlhttp://www.itu.int/newsroom/pp02/index.html
http://www.itu.int/newsroom/pp02/index.html
