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Telephone: +41 22 730 6039
Fax: +41 22 730 5939
E-mail: pressinfo@itu.int
Mr. Bartolo, Dean of the Delegations to the Conference, Mr. Secretary-General, Deputy Secretary-General, Director of the Radiocommunication Bureau and other officials of the Union, honourable delegates, ladies and gentlemen.
I thank you all most sincerely for the opportunity you have given me to undertake this very significant role as Chairman of your Conference. It is certainly an honour for me personally, for Australia and for the Asia-Pacific Region overall. I do, however, have a great degree of trepidation in accepting this role for I am very well aware of the importance of this Conference to the world radiocommunication community as a whole.
As you probably all know, I have participated in previous World Radiocommunication Conferences of the "new era ITU" as well as an earlier World Administrative Radio Conference and I have shared with many of you, my friends and colleagues, the excitement and challenge of these conferences. But above and beyond all of that, I have experienced the immense sense of achievement and satisfaction when we can look at the tangible evidence of the work we do.
You will all recall the efforts made in Spain at WARC-92 to reach agreement on spectrum allocations and associated regulatory provisions for new satellite systems - the so-called "big LEOs" and "little LEOs" - and allocations for satellite and terrestrial broadcasting sound services. There were many hundreds of pages of text but, in the end, the important aspect is not the result but the tangible, hard practical evidence of our work. There are LEO systems now in space providing telecommunications and other valuable community services. Many countries are now moving to introduce digital sound broadcasting services. There are also broadcasting satellite sound services in advanced stages of development as well as complementary terrestrial services using digital technologies. In my own country, for example, we are moving in this direction to introduce digital sound broadcasting.
But additionally with all of these developments we have been able to proceed whilst existing terrestrial and satellite services also continue to develop in harmony through agreed sharing provisions.
These are examples of the practical rewards to us all. I hope that after this Conference we will all look back on the outcome with pride: not the texts, not all the paperwork we produced, but the practical outcome, that is what is important to us, I believe.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It has been said often over the last two years that this Conference has been set a punishing agenda. We have a significant number of diverse issues and within these issues there are many potential problem areas. But, I must say, that I have great optimism and confidence that we can successfully address these issues and achieve outcomes that we will be able to accept in terms of our national and international objectives.
We will have the benefit of an extraordinary amount of preparatory work that has been done individually and collectively. Proposals have been prepared, made and reworked through many iterations. Groupings such as the Arab group of countries, CEPT, CITEL and APT have worked together to produce agreed positions and proposals. I certainly believe this will be a positive benefit to our work as there has already been a reconciliation process bringing together a wide range of views and alternatives from individual countries within these groups. This preparatory process has saved much time and effort within this Conference in reducing the need to reconcile these individual approaches. There have also been regional information meetings and very many informal meetings in attempting to come closer together on the proposals and positions we bring to this Conference. There is also the excellent work done by study groups and the CPM to provide a sound technical basis for our deliberations.
But the time has come when all of this work will come to fruition.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
For my part, I give you my personal assurance that I will do the very best I can to deal with the proposals you will all present to the Conference at various meetings as fairly and impartially as I possibly can.
As you know, much of the detailed work will be done through the committees and working groups of the Conference that we will shortly consider on our agenda. It is my intention to work closely with those you will elect to chair these committees and working groups and to assist in any way I can, on a day by day basis, as they proceed. I am also available to any of you individually if you wish to discuss any matter of concern as we go forward. And I mean that. If anyone has a problem that he or she would like to discuss, my door is always open.
Much is at stake over the next four weeks. Let us all work together to ensure a successful outcome.
Thank you everyone.