I have pleasure in inviting you to participate in
the Regional Preparatory Meeting for the Arab States
(RPM-ARB) for the 2010 World Telecommunication
Development Conference, to be held in Damascus,
Syria, from 17-19 January 2010 at the kind
invitation of the Government of Syria.
Regional Preparatory Meetings are organized in
response to Resolution 31 (Rev. Doha, 2006) in a bid
to achieve greater regional coordination and engage
Members in the WTDC-10 process early on. They also
seek to identify issues, at the regional level, that
need to be addressed to foster the development of
telecommunications and of information technologies,
taking into account the expression of pressing needs
facing the Member States and Sector Members of the
region.
The RPM-ARB is expected to draw up
recommendations on carefully selected top priority
areas identified as essential for the ICT
development of the countries of the region, within
which Study Group Questions, programmes, projects
and regional initiatives can be identified for
consideration by WTDC-10. To this end, to facilitate
effective preparations by the Members of the ITU
Telecommunication Development Sector (ITU-D), a very
focused RPM-ARB agenda based on the general
framework provided by the preliminary draft WTDC-10
agenda has been prepared and is found in Annex I.
In order to consolidate the various proposals
submitted in a way that lends itself to the
elaboration of a solid, cohesive and powerful
package consisting of inter-related and mutually
reinforcing components, a template has been
developed and can be found at www.itu.int/ITU-D/conferences/rpm/2009/documents/template.html.
In addition to providing a common approach to submit
proposals, the template will also provide a
fast-track to the processing of the input documents
by reducing the reformatting of the contributions.
Contributions not submitted on this template may
therefore result in delays in their processing and
posting. The working documents will be posted on the
ITU-D website as they become available at the same
address.
To enable advance preparations by delegations and
in light of the constraints derived from the
schedule of all activities of the Development
Sector, a deadline has been set for the submission
of proposals and contributions on the items of the
draft agenda to 14
