You may recall that the ALAC had decided to ask Mohamed El Bashir (as a member of the IDN Policy WG) and Wael Nasr (as the ALAC representative on the IDN Implementation Guidelines Experts Group) to advise as to whether a statement was required and if so, what should it say.

Wael submitted an extensive set of notes which expressed a desire to see a quite different outcome from that outlined in the LGR that were put out for comment. Mohamed felt that a statement was not absolutely needed, but suggested that we could mke a short one because in his mind, the LGR group had done a particularly effective job given the difficulty in addressing the Arabic variations across languages and countries.

I felt that Wael's statement was one that he could present personally, but that we had no grounds to believe that it would be widely supported within our Arabic community. Mohamed's statement was more in line with what the ALT believed to be a widely held position and recommended that we proceed with it.

I asked Ariel to draft the statement in line with Mohamed's comments, and to pass it by him. She did this and he approved.

Due to our focus on the accountability CCWG, we missed the end of the comment period, but have been given permission to submit it late. On behalf of the ALT, I have asked Ariel to do so, and at her earliest convenience start a ratification vote.

The final statement can be found at https://community.icann.org/x/bIJYAw.

Alan