[WSIS CS-Plenary] Intersessional negotiation group - 26 oct, afternoon session

[wsis at tic.ch]

Dear all,

Find below a summary of today's afternoon session in the intersessional
negotiation group.

Best regards,
Jette Madsen


Wednesday 26 October, afternoon session

After the delegations had had time to have a look at DT26 again, they agreed to
use it as a basis for negotiations. Elements from DT9 will be brought in
whenever a delegation feels that a part is missing.

In the beginning of the meeting, Canada stated that it did not felt comfortable
discussing multi-stakeholder participation in the implementation without the
presence of other stakeholders.This was supported by UK (EU).

The EU also addressed that an ITU proposal was made available in the back of the
room. The EU stated that it was not fair that one organisation had been given
the privilege to make a proposal in the intergovernmental meeting and that they
hoped this privilege would be extended to other stakeholders. The chair replied
that he would inform the stakeholders about this at his briefing tomorrow
morning.

Reading of para 1-10:

Para 1-6 was agreed with few, not very substantial changes.

Para 7: Para. 9 was moved back in the end of para 7, so as para 7 now stands as
para 4 stood in DT9. Agreed.

New paras 7A and 7B: G77 proposed that new 6bis from DT9 was inserted as a new
para 7A. US preferred the language in newest 6bis. As there was not agreement
on this, Karklins proposed to let both paras stay in the text in brackets.

Para 8:
Agreed

Para 9: moved to 7(see above)

Para 10: Iran wanted “mutually-agreed terms” to be conditioned to the results of
negotiations on para 20 in chap. 2. US would not commit to this. Para was not
agreed.

New paras 10a and 10b: Honduras proposed to insert 6bis and 9B from DT6 after
para 10.Not agreed.

“Conceptual reading” of para 23-30:
With about an hour left, the chair proposed to move to paras 23-30 for a
“conceptual reading” to find out whether governments could agree in principle
on these paragraphs.

There was general support to the conceptual framework of the text. In the
following is highlighted some of the positions that were expressed.

Chile noted that its proposal on follow-up that was not reflected in the new
text:
[49A: We request ECOSOC, through its Commission on Science and Technology for
Development, to oversee the systematic coordination, review and policy debate
of the Geneva and Tunis outcomes of the World Summit on the Information
Society.]] The Chilean proposal was supported by Nicaragua and El Salvador.

El Salvador also recalled the solution in the GFC paper, where UNSG is asked to
set up coordination within a specific date.

Ghana (African group) said that they were working on a redrafting of the Annex,
which they will submit tomorrow.

UK (EU) stated that their basic building blocs was
-	Implementation in a system wide and coordinated way, which should follow
resolution 57/270B.
-	let it be up to each UN agency to decide for themselves how to implement
(within this reference to stakeholders). No need to blueprint role for any
specific agency (in the briefing with EU after the meeting, it was clarified
that this meant no Annex)
-	SG should coordinate the implementation between agencies
-	Not miss experiences of agencies or multistakeholders
-	Follow-up within ECOSOC
-	Need to look for a way to fit in a multistakeholder approach with this

At the briefing with EU after the meeting, the UK expressed that the EU liked
the idea of the Chilean proposal and would like to see the proposal included in
the text in brackets to keep it in the discussion.

Russia: in favour of approach building on experiences of UN agencies.

Egypt, Iran and Brazil wanted more weight to the follow-up of the WSIS process
than reports to ECOSOC.


Jette Madsen
CONGO - WSIS CS Secretariat
11, Avenue de la Paix
CH-1202 Geneva
Tel: +41 22 301 1000
Fax: +41 22 301 2000
E-mail: wsis at ngocongo.org
Website: www.ngocongo.org



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