"Historic" UN summit on information technology enters final day

7 July - Dubbed as "IT summit," the Economic and Social Council's High-Level Segment on Information Technology was of "historic" significance as the first global meeting to discuss ways of bridging the digital divide, the Council's President, Ambassador Makarim Wibisono of Indonesia, told the press today on the final day of the three-day forum.

Speaking to correspondents at UN Headquarters in New York, Ambassador Wibisono said that the meeting marked the first time that such high-level participants - Heads of State, ministers, directors of major UN financial organizations - had participated in a gathering to discuss communications technology for development and ways of overcoming the technological gap between developing and developed countries.

"It was also a historic moment for ECOSOC because it was the first time that ... we were able to arrange the participation of the private sector," Ambassador Wibisono said referring to the UN Economic and Social Council by its acronym. "[W]e consider that in order to be able to address the issue of digital divide, we have to be able to also encourage the participation [of] the private sector."

Reporting on the proceedings, ECOSOC President said that the first and second days of the summit had gone "very well" and that he looked forward to the adoption Friday evening of a Ministerial Declaration on information and communications technology. "This event is the start of a big process," he said, in reference to the upcoming Millenium Summit during which communications technology for development will also be taken up, primarily through a discussion of a report by Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Echoing Ambassador Wibisono's comments, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs Nitin Desai, who also took part in the news conference, underscored the "level and quality of participation," both from the Member States and the private sector, pointing to the participation of CEOs from Nokia, SAP, WorldTel, among others.

"The focus of this meeting has been to identify what exactly can the UN do to help," he said. "I think the sense which has emerged over the past few days is that the crucial role that the UN can play is in providing an interface between the information technology community and the development community."

This morning the ECOSOC meeting, formally known as the "High-Level Segment on Development and International Cooperation in the 21st Century: The Role of Information Technology in a Knowledge-based Global Economy," held five simultaneous round tables on connectivity and infrastructure, tele-medicine, intellectual property, human capital investment and the environmental dimension.

ECOSOC's substantive session for 2000 continues next week with a Coordination Segment that will focus on the UN system's progress in following up major UN conferences and its implementation of the Habitat Agenda.