hi dessi, this is really good news. let us see what we can learn from this for the whole european region. best greetings annette

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: Dessi Pefeva <dpefeva@isoc.bg> Gesendet: 24.06.08 13:22:20 An: At-Large Worldwide <alac@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Betreff: [At-Large] Bulgaria moves to register Cyrillic Internet domain

I am happy to announce that the Bulgarian government has shown officially its intent to register the .?? (.bg in Cyrillic) domain. They did it in a letter, sent yesterday to ICANN's President Paul Twomey.

This is due also thanks to the efforts of ISOC-Bulgaria. Bulgarian President, Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, and the Minister of ITC are all members of ISOC. They have talked on a number of times in the past six months with ISOC.bg on these issues.

Obviously the conversations have been fruitful. See more information here: http://uk.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUKL2360195920080623

And this is the official press-release from the ITC Agency:

Bulgaria has requested the registration of a Cyrillic top level domain (TLD) from _ICANN_ <http://www.icann.org/>. The letter from the chairman of the Bulgarian State Agency for Information Technologies and Communicatoins (_SAITC_ <http://www.daits.government.bg/>) Plamen Vatchkov to the president of ICANN Paul Twomey was delivered today, June 23^rd , 2008, in Paris via the Bulgarian representative to the Governmental Advisory Committee of ICANN, and was distributed for information only in Geneva where the ITU is headquartered. Thus Bulgaria requested the fast track for implementation of its own Cyrillic IDNs.

In the letter to the ICANN President, the SAITC chairman informs the authoritative international organization, dealing with assigned names and numbers, that Bulgaria has decided to register and maintain the country code .?? (bg in Cyrillic)

Further in the letter, SAITC chairman informs that the discussion on using Cyrillic domain names was initiated by the President of Bulgaria Georgi Parvanov during the visit of the Russian President Putin and the then vice-prime minister, and now President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev during their visit in January 2008 in Sofia. The question was also discussed during meetings of Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev with the Russian counterparts, as well as during talks between foreign ministers Ivailo Kalfin and Sergei Lavrov. Last week, Russian President Medvedev announced in Moscow, that the issue of Cyrillic domain names is an important one, and on his political agenda.

"We believe that the initiative, which we discussed with our Russian friends in the last months, is a clear fact about the importance which Bulgaria has in the world Internet. It is an example not only about the historical meaning of the Cyrillic alphabet in the world arena, but also about the fact that through Bulgaria it became an official alphabet of the European Union. By sending this letter to Dr. Twomey -- ICANN's president and my friend, SAITC expresses not only the wish, but the readiness to put the Cyrillic IDNs on the Internet map", says Plamen Vatchkov. "There's nothing more natural than the proposed domain to be the country code, which is already known and accepted in the country itself. Creating domains in scripts, different from the Latin, is the next big step in the development of the Internet, which will allow millions of people who don't use English to have easier access to the Global Net resources".

SAITC is organizing a meeting later this year in Sofia, where all countries, using Cyrillic will be invited - Belarus, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Mongolia, Russia, Serbia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine. The meeting will be dedicated to discussion about IDNs.

for more information: Press Center phone +359-2-9492368 "Ekaterina Popova" <epopova@daits.government.bg <mailto:epopova@daits.government.bg>>

/Ms. Dessi Pefeva, Internet Society - Bulgaria/

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