INTERNATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATION UNION RADIOCOMMUNICATION ADVISORY GROUP GENEVA, 23-25 JANUARY 1995 Document RAG95/4-E 9 December 1994 Original: English Australia COUNTRY NAMES IN RR FOOTNOTES 1 Introduction WARC-92 experienced a flood of additions of country names to existing footnotes without the application of a review procedure to ensure that the additions were fully understood and accepted by other countries. Many new footnotes were generated without any real attempt to standardize texts and ensure clarity. The VGE Report and recommendations relating to footnotes contain positive proposals that would help to reduce the proliferation of footnotes, encourage standardization of texts and the removal of country names where these are no longer needed. A rather different problem concerns the emergence of new countries with different boundaries from those applying to the country of which they were previously part. This clearly requires some revision of country names in footnotes. 2 Proposals 2.1 In order to facilitate WRC-95 handling of footnotes, the Radiocommunication Bureau should now invite all administrations to review country footnotes in which they are named with a view to deletion at WRC-95 of their names as far as practicable. The invitation should refer specifically to the VGE Report and recommendations and to the results of the related surveys on footnotes containing country names carried out by the Radio Regulations Board. Administrations should be requested to make formal proposals to WRC-95 for removal of their country names from footnotes. 2.2 New ITU Members who were part of a country named in a footnote should be invited to review the need to be named in that footnote. 2.3 The RAG should recommend a procedure for application at WRC-95 and subsequent WRCs requiring formal submission and consideration of documents for all cases where a country wishes to add its name to an existing footnote. ******