 Welcome to the ITU studio in Geneva where I'm very pleased to be joining the studio today, Mr Rashid Ismailov, who is the Council Chair for 2018 and also is the Deputy Minister of Telecom and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation. Mr Ismailov, thank you very much indeed for joining us today. Thank you very much for inviting me. Now I'd like to start off by talking about the fact that many important decisions and agreements are reached at Council each year regarding the strategic and financial plans of the Union. What activities, policies and strategies do you think need to be in place in order for ITU to fully respond to today's dynamic and rapidly changing ICT environment? I mean, I went somehow to structure my chairmanship and I thought that it should be maybe top bottom going from two trends actually, the UN overall organization documents like sustainable development goals, which are an integrated part of our goals of ITU goals, and then the ITU main documents like convention and constitution going further on to strategic plan of ITU, and the outcomes of the previous planning potential conference where the future discussion that are going to take place were more or less outlined already. Now among the goals we have four goals as far as I've seen and the resolution 71 I had to go through some documents. There are different goals but we have to stick actually in order to achieve these goals. I mean each council, each venue of ITU should bear in mind that these are the things that we have to follow and achieve step by step. So I mean there are four goals as far as I remember among them innovation, growth, sustainability, integrity and so on. I mean all of them are outlining the challenges as you said that we are facing as the main kind and one of the fields that we are responsible for that size city. So these are all the things that have been already discussed and usually as far as I understood for the council each year, I mean it took place each year and each time before the council some big venue like WTDC in my case took place. And for me the WTDC was something that gave me food for thought what should be discussed and what will be discussed actually in the council. Besides I came on purpose to the these two weeks council working groups meetings in order to find out what will be discussed definitely and you know what should be what would be the subjects for the discussion in the council and it gave me a lot of experience and I mean you easily can name it what will be discussed based on the council working groups that we had here. This is gender, channel night protection, other things bridging the gap, the digital divide and so forth and so forth. Now as chairman of ITU council 2018 you'll be shouldering a big responsibility as this year is also the year of the ITU Plenary Potentiary Conference which will be happening in Dubai later on this year. What do you think will be the main focus of council in the preparations for PP18? Well obviously that's the peak of the activities once in four years when the elections will take place and I believe that council is kind of rehearsal or preparation for the candidates in the first place to show their programs to have informal meetings, receptions, all this kind of stuff. This is what regards to the elections but altogether I mean there will be a lot of discussions. The subjects I've mentioned most of them they will be also considered during the Plenary Potentiary Conference and in the council which is they will be just part of the member states 48 out of almost 200 where they will be the essence of the discussions. I mean the tension and the polarity of the points of view, the different approaches. This is what I've already felt here in the council working groups and I'm anxious about orchestrating kind of this venue because there was a lot of things based on my experience as vice chairman last year is on the shoulders of the chairman. I was going to ask you as vice chair of council last year what were the most important lessons that you learned and that you'd be applying to your chairmanship this year? Eva Spina was a role model for me because I mean she was brilliant. She was quiet. They were a lot, as I told them, they were a lot of tension, they were a lot of different approaches, disputes during the course of the council and the way she treated all these things, the way how professional she approached that was really amazing and I admire her. I really thought to myself that it's hard not to be successful as a chairman when you are backed up with the guys from IT or from the secret area because each subject when we were discussing they were really supporting and backing up the chairman during the council. From the personal experience, of course I was like watching over all this. There was not so much work for me to do. There was only maybe one thing I did myself that was ad hoc group which was also quite a challenging actually to get an agreement and consensus among all the participants in this ad hoc group which I eventually managed to do and I believe that that was my personal experience and of course I mean from the procedure and preparation kind of you there's a lot of preparation work for the chairman of the council. Each day prior ahead of the plenary session there was a lot of kind of you and she was going through with her advisor Eva Spina and the guys from IT through all subjects what kind of implications might happen during the discussions during the plenary and there's one thing I would like to mention is the work, the activity of admin committee which was headed by Vernita Harris and she was absolutely brilliant in this one and I'm really happy that she's actually going to be the head of admin committee this year as well and I believe that she will offload my burden actually very much during the... I mean she's professional and brilliant. Also I would like to mention Darin. Darin was so timidly and non-visibly supporting the chairman and myself as well. Just very quiet with no exposure of herself guiding us and telling us and giving the points. That's great. I mean finally I mean as you mentioned it's a tough time. There's lots of tough subjects that are tackled and it's a year which we're very much looking at PP18 as well which is once every four years and a very important date in the RTU calendar. So I mean is there a message perhaps you'd like to convey to the RTU membership just prior to this council? Personally. Before coming into Geneva actually during the Christmas holidays I was reading the book of Kamaeomichi and Japanese footerologists about... The book was called The Decline of Nation-States and the Rise of the Regional Economies which in the course of our discussions globally and in the countries and in other places like I was last year in G20, the ministers who are responsible for the digital economy meeting and there are a lot of discussions we have a program about the digital economy. Personally ITU and UN, UN is in the first place the humanitarian kind of organization and in ITU especially we're not dealing just with the techniques, the distribution of the frequencies and standards and so forth and so forth. There are a lot of kind of scholar issues conceded in ITU and it happens so that we are in the front line of this digital shift and digital economy that is coming and some of the signs of digital economy are already in our life and I think that during the council and during the pleniport a lot of humanitarian issues will be raised up that ITU should take into consideration not only the benefits of digital economy and the brightness of the future but also the risks that are coming with the digital economy that in this book it's said that mankind would be developed according to the sports there will be like 100 green points, big agglomerations in the cities with all the fruits and benefits of globalization and the rest of the world will be just wild village with no opportunity, no excess and so forth. These are the things that we're considering here, the digital divide, the gender equality and so far and so forth sustainable development growth, all the things that are and should be conceded. That's a little bit shift of ITU, that's a big challenge. This is not anymore about the frequencies and standards and protocols but what I've seen from the audience as vice chairman last year my impression is that the people that are in ITU, that coming in ITU, presenting in states, countries they are really, you know, several grades up of these techniques and they know the synergy of the humanitarian and technical aspects and that's the unique competence that the people in ITU and those who are coming to ITU they are having and I'm really happy and anxious about the experience that I'm going to have as chairman of the council. Thank you very much, we wish you the very best and thank you very much for joining us today. Thank you very much.