 Let me jump now directly to Mr. Menke, the colleague from the Division of High Education that is behind the preparation of not only the regional conference, but also of this conference. Mr. Menke, please, you have the floor. Thank you. Thank you very much. Is this working? Yes. Thank you very much. Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues, dear friends, I had the privilege to participate in all six regional conferences that provided their input to this world event, and there were six of them, they are listed on this slide, and we have tried to capture the highlights and the key messages in the draft communicate that you will be discussing and amending later during the conference. Of course, the presentation I'm doing today is just presenting highlights because it is very difficult to give justice to the richness of the debates. I would like to say, however, that there were some common features in all six conferences which underlined the strategic role of higher education in the Knowledge Society, which focused on the new dynamics and the changing landscape of higher education and research, which pointed to the need for strengthening regionalization and establishing common higher education and research areas, and which placed a great focus on access and the challenges of massification in all regions, of course, not forgetting quality and excellence that were present in the discussions everywhere. The first one took place in Latin America and the Caribbean in June and was very well attended with over 3,000 participants. It was opened by President Uribe in dialogue with the students, and its highlights were on higher education as a public good, a human right, a responsibility of states, warning about the dangers of commercialization, trade liberalization, and gaps, underlining higher education's multicultural, multi-ethnic, and multilingual dimension, focusing also on the immigration of skilled professionals and finding ways to reverse this trend, and again the need for stronger regionalization, true establishing a common higher education and research area, and last is in Spanish. Then the second one was held in Macau in September 2008, and the meeting began with a typhoon that was the new unexpected dynamic that postponed the conference for one day but gave for a focus discussion. The highlights were participatory approaches and grassroots communities linking to them, a stronger role of multistakeholders and the innovative program designs, a wider access, diversity of providers, serving different clientels, the importance of ICTs and the mega universities, seven out of the world, 10 mega universities being in Asia, and a focus on quality again, measuring outcomes, achieving excellence of systems, not of institutions only. Then we went to Dakar for the African conference, we had very strong ministerial presence, also the Prime Minister of Namibia was there, and many international partners and organizations. The highlights were access to encourage the private sector and ICTs while respecting quality and introducing regulation, quality assurance again but with a strong role on regulation and capacity building, science and technology and the need to train engineers locally, cost sharing and diversification of funding sources, and again creating of an African high education area and centers of excellence. In India, in February, we were honored at the opening by her Excellency Pratiba Patil, President of India, and the highlights of this conference were the fundamental interlinkage between higher education, nation building and sustainable development, inclusiveness to encourage the disadvantaged, ICTs for expanding access, sharing e-learning materials and technologies for improving the affordability of higher education, globalization that respects local cultures and values, and mention was made strongly of the global financial crisis and maintaining and increasing public spending on higher education and seeking alternatives to augment resources for higher education and research. Then we went to Bucharest and the memories from there was the memorable concert at the Ateneum by the students of the academy. Highlights of this conference were equity and access, combining competitiveness and values, quality with the standards, guidelines and register developed within the Bologna process and the Bologna process which is the major development in the Europe region in the past 10 years, a regional initiative which has global relevance, finally the inter-regional cooperation between Europe and other regions was strongly underlined and UNESCO's role was considered as an essential. The final conference was held in Cairo for the Arab states. It was interesting because it featured the showing of students films which was quite nice. The highlights were to expand access to reach 30% over the next 10 years, quality to develop mechanisms in at least 50% of faculties both public and non-public, to reinforce the societal role of higher education and disseminate a culture of citizenship and tolerance, to strengthen a regional system of qualifications and to promote UNESCO chairs on key topics, to increase allocations in scientific research to 2% of the GDP during the next 10 years. All the declarations from these conferences are in your conference packages but if you wish to read the reports they're accessible on the websites. So ladies and gentlemen, these were the six conferences that provided input to this conference and we will have now a discussion, more in-depth discussion and perceptions from the ministers or their representatives of countries that have hosted these conferences. I thank you very much for your attention. Thank you, Mr. Mencher, for successfully organizing these six regional preparatory conference at UNESCO.