Mr Chairman,

Distinguished Heads of State and Government,

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It gives us pleasure to be amongst this august gathering here today to participate in this important Second Phase of the World Summit on the Information Society hosted in this beautiful and historic city of Tunis. My delegation joins us in expressing our sincere thanks to the President and people of Tunisia for the warm welcome and generous hospitality accorded us since our arrival here. We also extend our thanks to His Excellency Mr Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General of the United Nations for his vision and guidance in ensuring the success of this Summit and in garnering international cooperation in this new and vital sector for global economic prosperity.

Our thanks are also due to the Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union, the Chairman of the Summit Preparatory Committee and the members of the Executive Secretariat for their untiring efforts in preparing for this Summit. We also wish to commend the remarkable contributions of the civil society and the private sector in this Summit.

While the digital revolution offers real development opportunities for the economies of the World, the digital divide between developed nations and the rest of the world sadly continues to grow. We believe that there should be a mechanism to facilitate meaningful participation on Internet Governance to accomplish the vision of the Declaration of Principles of the World Summit on the Information Society. An International Internet Governance System should be developed to harmonize technical and policy issues to the advantage of the global community. We also wish to add that sustained efforts should be made to ensure participation of developing countries to make the system truly meaningful and effective.

Nepal is committed to the Geneva Declarations of Principles. We believe that the Internet, which has become omnipresent in our lives, can be truly beneficial to humankind if a multi-stakeholder participation, which is inclusive and transparent, can be developed.

We need to focus on how the global information revolution could be made a development enabler in the real sense by contributing significantly to reducing poverty and promoting all-round development in the world. This would provide us with a great opportunity to accelerate the process of bridging the gap between the haves and the have-nots in terms of access to information technology. The international community needs to give special attention to the needs of the developing, land-locked and mountainous countries which face problems of promoting the use of ICTs due to high infrastructure costs.

Nepal is committed to the common vision of the information society and its key principles based on shared knowledge. Since the initiation of the WSIS, my country has played a significant role in the development and promotion of her ICT sector, recording impressive achievements in all the eleven WSIS action lines despite her own constraints and limited resources. The State's efforts have been further augmented with the establishment of an autonomous High Level Commission for Information Technology to enhance internal and external private investment and to stimulate new economic sectors like e-commerce. It is a matter of satisfaction that this has resulted in an ever-growing mutually beneficial partnership between the government and the private sector in the field of information technology.

We believe the time has now come for all of us gathered here today to make a common commitment to implement the Declaration adopted by the World Summit on the Information Society with all honesty and sincerity to the benefit of all mankind. We wish the Summit every success.

Thank You!