Dear all, In a letter dated April 24 2009, GAC Chair Janis Karklins wrote to ICANN CEO Paul Twomey on the subject of geographical names and the new gTLD process. At our Council meeting last week, it was decided that we should respond to this letter and I volunteered to write a draft. We agreed that our response should be sent to the GAC asap, preferably by the end of this week, and Avri informed the GAC that they should expect a response from the GNSO Council by this Friday. In order to fine-tune our draft response, a team was set up and I submitted my draft to the team yesterday. The team responded very quickly in order to meet the Council¹s Friday deadline and considered my draft ³good to go², with one addition by David Maher and a comment by Avri, both of which have been included in the draft letter we are submitting to the full Council today (see attached). Could you please review and let me know of any further changes you would like to make, or of your approval, so that Avri may then send the finished letter to the GAC on Friday. My thanks to the members of the drafting team: David Maher - Avri Doria - Nacho Amadoz - Edmon Chung - Brian Cute - Ken Stubbs - Olga Cavalli - Tony Harris - Terry Davis William Drake. Best, Stéphane Van Gelder