AzerTag, Azerbaijan State Info Agency
Nov 25 2004

BAKU CONFERENCE ON “GLOBAL INFORMATION-COMMUNICATION
TECHNOLOGIES-2004”
[November 25, 2004, 19:22:33]

Dear participants of Conference!

I am glad to welcome you in capital of Azerbaijan, in the city of
Baku, and I wish work of the Conference success, and each of you –
health and happiness.

Statement of principles and the Plan of the activity, adopted at the
December 2003 World Summit in Geneva, being extremely a successful
step on the way of creation of information society, have put in pawn
a strong basis for solution of global problems of mankind.
Azerbaijan, known in the world as the oil country, confidently coming
nearer to the information society, has stated at the Summit that is
ready to transform the oil resources into real potential of each
citizen of our country, and began to carry out concrete measures in
this direction.

The Ministry of Communications of Information Technologies created
after the Summit, playing a leading role in this area, within the
framework of the special state program realizes various projects
connected to economy, basing on knowledge. It is confident that
results of the work, which have been successfully implemented by
Azerbaijan together with a number of the international structures,
including the UN Development Program (UNDP), in many spheres on
application of information-communication technologies, will evoke
interest of participants of the Conference.

Azerbaijan as the most dynamically developed country of region
possesses today good opportunities for expansion of sphere of
information technologies. However, the occupation continuing for
already over ten years of the Azerbaijan lands by Armenia and stay
over one million people in position of refugees complicate
realization of large-scale programs. In this sense, the problem of
“Information divide” which will be discussed at the Conference
represents for us extremely great value.

I hope, that your conference will make worthy contribution to the
cause of establishment of information society.

Ilham Aliyev,
President of the Republic of Azerbaijan
Baku, November 24, 2004