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Egypt Attends Preparatory Meetings for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)
Cairo, October 25, 2005
Egypt prepares to attend the resumption of the third meeting of the Preparatory Committee (PrepCom-3) that will be held in Geneva from 24 to 29 October, 2005 to finalize the preparations of the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). Egypt had also attended the PrepCom-3 meeting held in Geneva on September 19-30, 2005 in addition to participating in other preparatory meetings.
The PrepCom-3 Egyptian delegation includes experts from the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to handle negotiations in order to achieve documentation that will be presented to heads of states at the WSIS in Tunis on November 16-18, 2005. It is worth mentioning that PrepCom looks into finding solutions in the event that the country had not found one during the first phase. Egypt has been intensively involved in organizing Arab-African issues to familiarize the issues and bring closer the different points of view. The Egyptian delegation includes civil society organization representatives to increase civil society participation in the information society which is a part MCIT's plan.
The meeting is divided into two committees; the first to discuss Internet Governance, an issue tackled in the first phase of the summit, and the second looks into means of finance and follow up after the summit. It has been agreed to finalize all preparatory issues throughout this month to finalize finance and follow up issued, leaving Internet Governance to be discussed at the November meeting.
Egypt has participated in the second phase of the summit preparation since January 2002 when the criteria for civil organization participation in preparatory and summit meetings were agreed upon. A preliminary list of topics to be discussed at the summit has been approved to include expanding the beneficiaries of the Information Society, increasing Information Society awareness, breaching the digital gap while respecting linguistic and cultural differences, making communications and information technology a means to achieve economic and social goals, emphasizing the importance of merging into the Information Society and stressing the importance of creating partnerships with the private sector.
Egypt's participation in PrepCom is a sign of the government's (represented by MCIT) willingness to participate in the WSIS and its preparatory meetings and working towards regional organization in cooperation with the permanent Egyptian mission in Geneva.
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