This is the third time that St. Petersburg's splendid Tavrichesky Palace is playing host to a constellation of celebrated scholars, telecommunications specialists, Russian and other CIS politicians.

Our congress is taking place on the eve of a triumphant anniversary of this great city, an acclaimed hub of science, culture and industry and certainly a national leader in telecommunications.

We would like to wish all residents of St. Petersburg a happy 300th anniversary!

It is momentous that one of the hosts of this congress is the CIS Inter-Parliamentary Assembly, which has in recent years emerged as a think-tank generating model laws to propagate a common information environment across the CIS.

In Russia and the CIS, telecommunications have been radically revolutionized. The past decade has seen this once outmoded sector revitalized as a dynamic, growing industry wielding a powerful potential and appealing to investors.

We view this congress as another step forward in the run-up towards the upcoming World Summit on Global Information Environment.

Our subject, confidence and security in a common information environment, is extremely relevant today. Further progress in the global information environment is hinged on trust and understanding within civil society, on security of individual nations and the world overall.

Rapid progress in telecommunications can unite the whole world or break it apart.
We hope that insightful debates and broad-based exchange of ideas at this congress will yield new solutions dealing with the social, political, human and technological issues in telecommunications.

With this in mind, we have scheduled both plenary meetings and roundtables addressing the industry's immediate priorities.

We are positive that this congress will take us to a whole new place in common understanding of the ways of a modern information environment, in model law-making and, most importantly, in confidence and security.

We wish all participants fruitful, rewarding work at this congress!