Dear IGF Secretariat, Please refer to the following email from you regarding inclusion of the APRALO's proposed workshop in the Main Session on "Multilingualism". APRALO, in the belief that multilingualism is a critically important issue for the individual Internet users in Asis-Pacific Region, expressed her willingness to merge with the other stakholders' proposals to create a super Main Session Workshop. Since you confirmed that APRALO would be one of the co-organizers of the captioned Main Session in August, the APRALO's representatives, Hong Xue and other colleagues, have been working diligently with the other co-organizers. Since June 2008, IGF workshop planning has been discussed at every monthly meeting of APRALO. An APRALO IGF Planning Chronicles can be seen from her website at https://st.icann.org/asiapac/index.cgi?planning_for_igf_2008. The APRALO notes that your appointed Chair on Multilingualism Panel, Mr. Patrik Fältström, has been very successfully engaging all the co-organizers from the different stakeholders (ICANN, UNESCO, APRALO, etc.) to do the planning work. He created the mailing list on multilingualism that involves all the relevant parties, including APRALO. On behalf of the APRALO, Hong, since September 2008, has been working closely with Patrik and others on document drafting, program development and other arrangement. She attende all the face-to-face meetings in Geneva, Cairo and Hyderabad and joined the discussions on the list. APRALO has always been a responsible and responsive stakeholder and organizer of the Main Session. Surprisingly, when the APRALO representative, Hong, attended the pre-meeting for the Open Dialogue following the Main Sessions on Multilingualism and Access on December 3, she was specifically excluded by Mr. Adam Peak, whom we heard is representing the IGF Secretariat. Mr. Peak's explanation that it was supposed to be a working session without any irrelevant persons. However, the pre-meeting message was circulated in the multilingual list and it should be interpreted as a meeting for all co-organizers. APRALO is relevant indeed. Why APRALO was the one that was excluded? We believe we deserve an answer here. We hope the secretariat could be consistent with the WSIS Principles on multistakeholdership. As an UN event held in Asia, the participation of the Asia Internet user community is important. We regret that the users who are genuinly willing to contribute to IGF process are deprived of such opportunity. Finally, we respectfully request the IGF secretariat to send an answer to APRALO list at <apac-discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org>, which is open to any individual Internet users in AP region and subscribed to the list. The message is being copied to the Chair of ICANN At-Large Advisory Committee, Ms Cheryl Langdon-Orr, who is another APRALO representative on the IGF planning. Cordially Hong Xue APRALO On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 8:43 PM, IGF <IGF@unog.ch> wrote:

Dear Mr. Xue,

You have submitted a proposal for a workshop entitled 'An Asian Perspective on Internationalization' for the IGF Hyderabad Meeting. As you may have noted when reading the last Multistakeholder Advisory Group (MAG) Meeting and Program Outline, we plan to introduce new type of workshops into the programme of the Hyderabad Meeting called 'Main Session Workshops'.

The main session workshops will be held in the main meeting hall and benefit from being Web cast (video and audio). They will also have real-time transcription and thus be part of the verbatim written record of the meeting. In addition, the main session workshops will have interpretation into all six UN languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish). The main session workshops will be co-organized with and overseen by the MAG and supported/facilitated by the IGF Secretariat.

The main session workshops will focus on the main themes described in the program paper. We have identified your proposed workshop as a potential component for one of the main session workshops and therefore offer you an opportunity to pool resources with other workshop proponents and join the main session workshop under the ''Multilingualism' 'sub-theme under the main heading '' Reaching the Next Billion'' . However your workshop would not retain its original identity if it is merged into a main session workshop.

Right now we are also in the process of approaching other workshop proponents with the same request. Please find attached what we think are related workshops as candidates for merging into a main session workshop. This list is not final and conclusive. You can view our website for more information on the workshops http://www.intgovforum.org/workshops_08/wrkshplist.php

However you are free to maintain your original workshop proposals. Please note that at this stage we cannot confirm whether we will have available slots, as the request for workshops exceeds the time and space available. Therefore we are encouraging mergers of workshops with similar proposals (and this independently from setting up the main session workshops.)

Please let us know whether or not you will be interested to join one of the main workshops under the sub-theme 'Multilingualism'.

Thank you,

IGF Secretariat