Mr Arasteh, Chairman of this Conference Preparatory Meeting,
Mr Zhao, Deputy Secretary‑General,
Mr Timofeev, Director of the Radiocommunication Bureau,
Mr Johnson, Director of TSB,
Mr Al-Basheer, Director of BDT,
Ladies and gentlemen,

It is a great pleasure and an honour for me to address these opening remarks to you all on the occasion of the second session of the Conference Preparatory Meeting 2007. The CPM is without doubt a major step in the preparation of World Radiocommunication Conferences and, looking at the attendance in this room, I can only be very optimistic with regards to the outcome of the work that will be accomplished during the coming 12 days.

This is the first global event taking place here in ITU since the new team took office on January 1st  following our election in Antalya, and I take the opportunity on behalf of my colleagues and on my own behalf to thank you all for your trust in us.  Together we are well aware of the challenges ahead of us and I can assure you that we have started on a good foot.  We have pledged to work together to meet those challenges as one team and we are doing just that.  I am personally very much pleased with the cooperation from the elected officials and from ITU staff that is doing its best to contribute to the cooperation.  The staff of BR and General Secretariat in preparing the conference is another important sign of the progress made.

It is well known that the work of the CPM is not limited to the present meeting and that the radiocommunication Study Groups have been working hard since the first meeting of the CPM, held just after WRC‑2003.  During this intervening period, the ITU-R Study Groups and the Special Committee, through their Working Parties and Task Groups, have been addressing 27 separate Agenda Items with a view to formulating the technical material upon which WRC-07 will base its decisions later this year. It is then your task to distil this work into a consolidated Report that, in turn, will represent a key contribution towards the conclusions made at that Conference.

As such, the CPM Report will be an indispensable reference for each Member State to prepare itself for the Conference and in particular for the developing countries which have not always found it possible to send representatives to the related Study Group meetings and the Special Committee.

The items that you have before you are numerous and far-reaching. Many of them concern complex and delicate issues of frequency sharing which seek to allow services with significantly differing characteristics to coexist within the same or neighbouring frequency space. Others however, touch on the future development of advanced radiocommunication technologies and as such, are vital to the world's future needs and expectations of telecommunication development. It is to these aspirations that ITU must respond diligently and untiringly in order to meet the needs of all, thereby fulfilling its key objective of closing the divide between developed and developing nations of the world. In support of these observations, I could cite in particular the following items:

• the search for additional spectrum for future mobile communications, particularly having in mind broadband multi-media applications; here it is important to remember that the level of mobile communications has already exceeded that of fixed line communications in many countries, particularly developing countries;
  
• the protection of those frequencies used by services and systems for the detection of natural disasters such as earth-quakes and Tsunamis; such a topic is highly relevant to one of ITU's principal concerns of disaster and emergency communications;
  
• spectrum requirements and associated regulatory issues for advanced aeronautical communication requirements;
  
• operational procedures and requirements for the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System;
  
• spectrum requirements for global broadband satellite systems, with the aim of bringing Internet connection to remote areas typically found in developing countries.

These, ladies and gentlemen, are just a sample of the key subjects that you will be discussing over the next two weeks, and again over a period of four weeks at WRC-07 later this year. Your deliberations on these items, and subsequently your final decisions, are of the utmost importance and represent a vital step towards helping ITU fulfil its ultimate vision of bringing the forefront of today's telecommunications technologies within the reach of all.

I would like to reiterate to you the readiness of all four elected officials of the ITU to move together with you and Valery Timofeev to make this conference a success.  ITU has a long tradition and culture of cooperation and compromise, let this tradition prevail during your debate.

I wish you a very successful Conference Preparatory Meeting.