The official visit of the ITU Secretary-General, Mr. Houlin Zhao, to Minsk, Republic of Belarus from 18 to 19 April 2017 was organized at the invitation of Mr. Sergei Popkov, Minister of Communications and Informatization of the Republic of Belarus. The main objective of the visit was participation in the 24th International Specialized Forum on Telecommunications, Information and Banking Technologies "TIBO-2017", which was held in Minsk from 18 to 21 April. Mr. Zhao took part in the official opening of TIBO-2017, attended by several senior Government officials, where he delivered an opening speech. Later, together with other high-rank guests, Mr. Zhao visited the TIBO exhibition. Also, Mr. Zhao attended Belarusian ICT Summit and participated in panel discussion with other high-ranked panelists.
Within the framework of the visit, Mr. Zhao had a meeting with Mr. Andrei Kobyakov, Prime Minister of the Republic of Belarus. At the meeting, among other issues, Mr. Zhao and Mr Kobyakov discussed the issues of ITU regional presence and opening of two ICT training centers for persons with hearing and speech disorders, created under the the implementation and continuation of the regional initiative CIS2: Ensuring access to telecommunications/ICT services for persons with disabilities.
Another objective of the mission was to participate in the joint 52nd Session of the RCC Board and the 23rd Session of the Coordination Council of the CIS Member States for Informatization, which was held in Minsk on 18 April 2017. Mr. Zhao delivered a greeting at the opening and made several interventions on relevant agenda points.
During the RCC events in Minsk, Mr. Zhao had a number of meetings with heads of communication administrations of the CIS. In particular, Mr. Zhao had a meeting with Mr. Nikolay Nikiforov, Minister of Telecom and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation. Among the topics discussed, there were recent meeting of G20 ICT ministers and the cybersecurity issues.
At the meeting with Mr. Dauren Abayev, Minister of Information and Communication of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Mr. Zhao, in addition to participation in ITU global events, highly appreciated the Kazakhstan project on eliminating digital divide.
At the meeting with Mr. Vahan Martirosyan, Minister of Transport, Communication and Information Technologies of the Republic of Armenia, Mr. Zhao discussed the ITU regional conference on spectrum management in December 2017, which is planned to be held in Yerevan.
At the meeting with Mr. Sherzod Shermatov, Acting Minister for Development of Information Technologies and Communications of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Mr. Zhao was invited by Mr. Shermatov to visit Uzbekistan during the national ICT Week, which is to take place in Tashkent on 18-22 September, which Mr. Zhao accepted.
Also, Mr. Zhao had a meeting with Mr. Mikhail Oseevskiy, President of Rostelecom. The conversation covered the issues of ITU standardization activities.
At the meeting with Mr. Nurudin Mukhitdinov, Director General of the Regional Commonwealth in the field of Communications (RCC), which also took part within the framework of the RCC events in Minsk, the issues of cooperation between ITU and RCC at the regional level were discussed.
