Hello All, I had conference call with the chair of ICANN Board (Vint Cerf) and Chair of the ccNSO (Chris Disspain) along with several ICANN staff members, to discuss coordination of work on IDN TLDs. The general concerns raised were: (1) The rules for creating new IDN-gTLDs should be consistent with the rules for creating new ASCII-gTLDs. (2) Any rules with respect to allowable characters, scripts, languages etc in the TLD strings for new IDN-ccTLDs should be consistent with the rules for new IDN-gTLDs. The discussion was fairly consistent with some of the discussions of our last conference call. There was support for the current draft of the GNSO IDN terms of reference. The terms of reference already make clear that work on IDN-gTLDs will make reference to the work in PDPDec05 on new gTLDs (e.g TOR 2a), and that we will identify and document any policy issue for which it is essential that policy is harmonized for all IDN-TLDs (TOR 1b). It was suggested that once the GNSO approves its terms of reference, that we should create a cover letter for communication to the other supporting organisations, and advisory committees (including President's Advisory Committee for IDNs) that sets out some general principles and objectives of the work. The cover letter should also give examples of policy issues that would require harmonisation between the ccTLDS and gTLDs. We can probably expand on the current preamble. We should work with the ccNSO in identifying some of these issues to include in the cover letter. Note that any recommendations that are intended to apply to the ccTLDs will need to go through the ccNSO policy development process. For example, the GNSO may develop a draft recommendation that relates to an issue that is common to ccTLDs and gTLDs. This recommendation would then need to be taken through the ccNSO process. If our recommendation is as a result of wide consultation and careful consideration, we would hope that the ccNSO process could be fast tracked. The converse could also apply where a recommendations is developed outside of the GNSO process, and we could fast track its consideration within the GNSO. We may decide to delay making a final decision on the recommendation until we have confidence that the recommendation will also be supported by the ccNSO. Regards, Bruce Tonkin