Mr Mário FRANCO Adviser, Ministério das Obras Públicas, Transportes et Comunicaçoes Allow me to start by welcoming Timor-Leste to the ITU family. We are confident that your membership will greatly enrich the ITU and all of us. Dear colleagues, Portugal has been a member of the ITU since its beginning and we continue to take our ITU responsibilities very seriously, as one of our key interna-tional commitments. The Portuguese Administration has been an active and constructive member of the ITU throughout its history and especially in recent times. As you know, Portugal had the pleasure of hosting the fourth World Telecommunication Policy Forum in April two thousand and nine, which consolidated the importance of this Policy Forum for the discussion of global and intersectorial issues among high-level par-ticipants and contributed for the development of the telecommunication sector worldwide. Furthermore, Portugal gave a decisive incentive and funding for the establishment of the “Center of Excellence for Portuguese and Spanish speaking coun-tries in Africa”, which plays a crucial role as a center for regional capacity building in telecommunications. Mr. Secretary-General; Honorable Ministers; Excellencies; Distinguished Delegates; Ladies and Gentleman; On behalf of the Portuguese Government, it is an honour to address the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference here in Guadalajara, a beautiful city famous for its warm hospitality and well earning its reputation as the Pearl of the West. Ladies and gentleman, I must also make a special ref-erence to the eSchool International programme, an ongoing project that Portugal is developing in cooper-ation with the ITU, as part of the remarkable ITU initia-tive “Connect a School, Connect a Community”. The eSchool International programme aims at pro-moting broadband Internet connectivity for schools in developing countries around the world, promoting the extensive use of ICT in education and learning by means of widespread take-up of mobile computers and digital interactive content and tools. This programme has also the ambition of increasing the number of schools and communities with access to ICT resources 176