 Welcome to the ITU studio at the ITU Plenty Potentiary Conference 2018 in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates where I'm very pleased to be joined in the studio by Mr. Ebrahim Al-Hadat who is director of the ITU Arab Regional Office. Ebrahim welcome to the studio. Thanks very much Max. Now I'd like to start off by talking about the fact that this the theme for this year's Plenty Potentiary Conference is connecting the world together and I wanted to ask how has your region been making strides to get everyone connected over the last four years since the last Plenty Potentiary Conference. Thanks very much Max for the question. Before I go ahead with that if you allow me I'd like to thank the government of the United Arab Emirates for hosting this such as a conference and the facilities that they have provided. Having said that the membership in the region have been working closely particularly since as you have said the conference that we had from Busan in 2014 followed by other conferences that we've had in between the radio conference, the WTDC and so on. So all these conferences provide us a platform and guidelines for what we had to do. Under the umbrella of the League of Arab States where we also work with the 22 Arab countries in that region there have been very close collaboration and assistance provided for the member states in that area. We've been assisting countries with regulatory issues. We've been assisting countries with capacity building on the ground and there has been a very good collaboration amongst the countries exchanging ideas, exchanging experiences and providing platforms for such things. We've been assisting countries also on developing strategies. Strategies that one important aspect of which is the connectivity of people with disabilities. We've been working with countries on how to develop strategies for access for this group of people. We also talk about rural communications and accessibility of people on those areas. So we're working with some also other UN agencies and providing policies on how to integrate communities in the rural areas and in the field of communications and also provide them as I say an input into the economy of the country and they'll be part of the economy of those countries. So indeed they have long plans and we have also as you might recall the Buenos Aires Development Conference that we had but we had come up with five regional initiatives and these initiatives are being implemented with partnership. You've been pretty busy I think in the region it's hosted more than its fair share of events and I know that there's one planned for next year as well quite a large one in ITU's calendar. I just wanted to ask you perhaps you could tell us a little bit about ITU's plans for the next years in your region. You mentioned the forthcoming event which is the radio conference which is going to be held in Germant-Cheikh 2019 and that's a big event. The region has accommodated and had hosted many many many events. From the planning potential itself we have got some resolutions on how to represent the ITU as a whole and play a part in the activities of the whole of the union and on the ground. We have other resolutions coming out from as I said from the World Telecommunication Development Conference, from the WTSA etc. These are we need to be implemented on the ground. We have a plan that will encompass all the activities of the ITU, General Secretariat and the three sectors and implement that on the ground with partnership from other states, other stakeholders. Now we also have conferences coming up to meet the requirements of the regional initiatives which is a main push which have been really the cornerstone of our activities here. We're very glad with the collaboration of many of the member states and supporting the implementation of these regional initiatives. We've had very good successful agreements being concluded very recently and we can see that's happening on the ground. So the plan is being put to the membership on an annual basis for it to be agreed and some amendment and changes are made to that plan to meet the requirements of that. We must not forget also the requirement for the least developed countries that we have a special program for those and of course the girls and the women in ICT which plays a very major role including as well the digital financial inclusion that we are working on. In fact Egypt is one of the three beneficiary countries along with Mexico and China for the partnership that we have with the World Bank and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In terms of the conversations you've been having here I'm sure you've been speaking to a lot of participants here but I wanted to ask you perhaps you might have a message to both to participants here through this channel but also to our wider audience as well. The ITU itself needs to be seen it is in fact but we need to be seen as touching the lives of people okay and we can only do that through the collaboration of our membership both the stakeholders the member states and all the academia's that in the small medium enterprises that we are engaging with so what we're looking at is to work with our membership as a whole and other stakeholders like other UN agencies to ensure that the benefits of the ICTs touch the lives of people and that they can feel that we are really impacting how they live. We also have you know we also have the SDGs and this is quite important the ICTs plays a cross-cutting role in them we are we have issues relating to e-agriculture and how to reach that poverty the health so all all these development goals the sustainable development goals are important to be deployed using the ICTs so the role of ITU is a cross-cutting role and we like to thank in advance all our membership in assisting us to touch people's lives. Ibrahim Alhaddad thank you very much indeed. Thank you.