– 163 – (7.2 – Other miscellaneous matters) 7 MISCELLANEOUS 7.1 Building, Rooms, Equipment 7.2 Other miscellaneous matters R 1081 WorldTel (C-1995) The Council, considering a) that the purposes of the ITU are, inter alia, to maintain and extend international cooperation between all Members for the improvement and rational use of telecommunications of all kinds; b) that, to this effect, the Union endeavours to promote the mobilization of the material and financial resources needed for implementing telecommunication projects; c) that the Constitution of the ITU (Geneva, 1992) recommends also to promote the establishment of preferential and favorable lines of credit to be used for the development of social projects aimed at extending telecommunication services to the most isolated areas in countries, recalling the findings of the “Missing Link” report issued by the Independent Commission for World-Wide Telecommunications Development, December 1984, which documented the then existing gap between the industrialized and developing worlds and inter alia declared that “neither in the name of common humanity nor on grounds of common interest is such a disparity acceptable”, having examined the report of the Secretary-General incorporating the World Telecom-munications Advisory Council (WTAC) vision of a seamless, global telecommunications network serving the needs of developed and developing countries alike, a key infrastructure of economic and social development in the twenty-first century, mindful that telecommunication brings about openness, accessibility, connectivity and networking; it affects mankind’s thought process, interpersonal relationships, education, institutions, communities, environment and international relations, recognizing that there is an ever-widening economic gap between the industrialized and developing worlds, manifested in poor information infrastructure in the least and lesser developed countries, acknowledging that the continued exclusive reliance on traditional methods of cooperation for expanding telecommunications around the world may alone not be sufficient to produce satisfactory solutions in providing access to telecommunications to a large segment of the population in the developing world, and understanding that a new, complementary cooperation mechanism can be created with the aim of satisfying the telecommunication needs of developing countries, investors and the telecommunication industry in providing telecommunication access to a large segment of the population in these countries as a result of the introduction of cost-effective technologies and liberalized economic environments, unanimously welcomes the establishment of WorldTel as a commercial transnational funding and development entity with a mission and structure as generally described in the report entitled “Closing the Global Communications Gap”,