Lyon, France, 11 November 1998 - Addressing the GET UP Meeting (Global Electronic Trade UN Partnership) of the Lyon Summit, President Clinton´s Senior Advisor Ira Magaziner offered a preview of a new presidential directive which President Clinton will announce on 30 November. This directive will deal in particular with the participation of developing countries in global electronic commerce.
Under the leadership of the State Department, he said, an inter-agency task force would be tasked to enhance financial and technical support offered to those developing countries willing to participate in global electronic commerce. This objective will be pursued in particular through the improvement of rural telephony, Internet connectivity and education and awareness levels in relevant areas. The presidential directive spelling out the details and implementation modalities of this initiative is scheduled to be provided by President Clinton on 30 November.
A first list of ´pilot countries´ could be announced at this time by the US Government, as the first beneficiaries of the initiative. Several international institutions and partners of this effort by the United States should then be designated.
New perspectives before the WTO Ministerial
In the course of the next few months, preparations for the Third World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial meeting (to be held in the United States in November 1999) will stimulate international discussions as well as practical activities in the area of electronic commerce, which is expected to rank high on the agenda of the Ministerial. The outcome of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Ministerial Meeting on electronic commerce, held in Ottawa, Canada, last month, already stressed the increasing importance granted by the international community to the ´development dimension´ of electronic commerce. UNCTAD was then identified as an important player in that context.
The new US initiative announced in Lyon by Mr Magaziner confirms the interest of the most advanced countries for an active participation by developing countries in a truly global electronic market economy. It also confirms that, in e-commerce more than in any other economic activity, the fast pace of technological change grants priority to practice and experimentation over analyses and policy statements. ´Those who know electronic commerce best are those who practice it´ stressed Bruno Lanvin, General Manager of GET UP, in Lyon.
At the GET UP Meeting of 11 November, several proposals were made for ´development partnerships´; for example, a joint programme involving UNCTAD, the ITU (International Telecommunications Union) and UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) could offer Internet access and e-commerce benefits to rural areas in developing countries through a rapid convergence among Trade Point and Telecentres programmes. The invitation made last Monday to UNCTAD by World Bank´s Vice-President Jean-François Rischard to join the InfoDEv Programme (through which the Bank has been mobilizing private support for projects related to tele-health, distant learning and electronic commerce) also takes on new significance in the light of the Clinton initiative.
Plea for cultural diversity on the Internet
In the same session of 11 November, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Secretary-General of the Paris-based ´Agence de la Francophonie´ called on the international community to put global information networks such as the Internet at the service of global democracy. ´Globalization will be what we want to make of it´, stressed the former UN Secretary-General. He also insisted that the provision and dissemination of culturally and linguistically diverse content was essential to the delivery of the benefits promised by the information revolution.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali also reminded the Lyon audience that electronic commerce would be a leading topic on the agenda of the upcoming Conference of the Ministers of the Economy of Francophone countries (Monaco, April 1999). He said that the outcome of the Lyon Summit in the area of electronic commerce should be fed into the work of that Conference. The announcement made earlier this week by French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin for a new package of French development assistance for Francophone countries will also contribute to reinforce the dynamic link between the Lyon GET UP meetings and the Monaco Conference.
