Statement of Norway by Mrs Eva Hildrum,
Director General, Ministry of Transport and Communications

Thank you Mr President,

Mr President, first, let me congratulate you on your election as Chairman of this Conference and your excellent leadership, and express Norway's sincere wish for this conference to be a success.

The Norwegian government has traditionally been strongly committed to the ITU. Norway was one of ITU's founding fathers. Every year, the whole nation celebrates the 17th of May - this may, however, be related to the fact that the International Telecommunications Day happens to coincide with Norway's national day.

Now that Member States and Sector Members are facing the consequences of convergence and the challenges of the digital divide, Norway's commitment stands firm. Therefore, Norway is running for a seat on the ITU Council, in co-operation with the four other countries of the Nordic region, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Sweden.

Our priorities are clear. We support the ITU reform process and will push on to advance it. Norway belongs to a group of countries who could be described as "small countries" On this background we will work to promote common interests of small countries in the field of telecommunications and the Information Society. We strongly believe that regional telecommunication organisations are of great importance to the work of the ITU. When Norway recently held the chairmanship of CEPT, memoranda of understanding related to co-operation were signed with the League of Arab States and the Asia-Pacific Telecommunity. Soon after our chairmanship CEPT signed a similar MoU with ATU and a co-operation agreement with CITEL. These agreements will be followed up by CEPT. On this background we are also very satisfied with the fact that CEPT is in the process of negotiating a co-operation agreement with the Regional Commonwealth in the field of Communications (RCC).

Furthermore, we see that convergence poses challenges that must be met. The widening of the scope from telecommunications to electronic infrastructure in general will directly influence strategies and work methods of the ITU. In this respect, Norway supports stronger involvement of the ITU in management of Internet domain names and addresses. ITU's representation and participation in GAC must continue. We also believe that ITU has an important role in technical as well as policy aspects of domain names and addresses, and would welcome a greater involvement of ITU in these questions. ICANN is currently undergoing an important reform process. The ITU should actively contribute to the reform of ICANN and to further reflection and work on the management of Internet domain names and addresses.

Norway is also firmly committed to the preparations for the upcoming World Summit on Information Society. The work so far has, naturally, been complicated, and we look forward to playing our part in solving the many questions related to creating a successful Summit with valuable outcome. In our view, the Summit can only be a success provided that all shareholders; Governments, NGO's, Private Sector and Civil Society take active part in the preparations and the Summit itself.

Norway is pleased to note that the European Countries participating in CEPT have presented more than twenty European Common Proposals for the consideration of the Plenipotentiary Conference. Among the many important contributions put forward in this way, we would especially like to point to several proposals related to the ITU reform process aiming to create a more effective organization. Furthermore, we share the concern about the ITRs expressed prior to this conference. Like others, we think that many of these regulations may prove no longer relevant, and we would therefore like to see changes in the Constitution and Convention in order to speed up the review process without undue expenditure.

Norway actively pursues strategies to bridge the digital divide. There is a growing inequity in access to, and use of, essential information and communications technologies in the developing countries. In this context we feel that it is important to maintain a strong focus on gender issues, and we congratulate the ITU on the establishment of a professional unit to address gender questions in ITU-D. We are also happy to note that there are concrete plans for creation of a Youth Forum in connection with TELECOM 2003 in Geneva.

Thank you very much Mr President.