[EURO-Discuss] Bulgaria moves to register Cyrillic Internet domain

[Dessi Pefeva]

I am happy to announce that the Bulgarian government has shown 
officially its intent to register the .?? (.bg in Cyrillic) domain. They 
did it in a letter, sent yesterday to ICANN's President Paul Twomey.
This is due also thanks to the efforts of ISOC-Bulgaria. Bulgarian 
President, Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, and the Minister of ITC are 
all members of ISOC. They have talked on a number of times in the past 
six months with ISOC.bg on these issues.

Obviously the conversations have been fruitful. See more information 
here: http://uk.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUKL2360195920080623

And this is the official press-release from the ITC Agency:

Bulgaria has requested the registration of a Cyrillic top level domain 
(TLD) from _ICANN_ <http://www.icann.org/>. The letter from the chairman 
of the Bulgarian State Agency for Information Technologies and 
Communicatoins (_SAITC_ <http://www.daits.government.bg/>) Plamen 
Vatchkov to the president of ICANN Paul Twomey was delivered today, June 
23^rd , 2008, in Paris via the Bulgarian representative to the 
Governmental Advisory Committee of ICANN, and was distributed for 
information only in Geneva where the ITU is headquartered. Thus Bulgaria 
requested the fast track for implementation of its own Cyrillic IDNs.

In the letter to the ICANN President, the SAITC chairman informs the 
authoritative international organization, dealing with assigned names 
and numbers, that Bulgaria has decided to register and maintain the 
country code .?? (bg in Cyrillic)

Further in the letter, SAITC chairman informs that the discussion on 
using Cyrillic domain names was initiated by the President of Bulgaria 
Georgi Parvanov during the visit of the Russian President Putin and the 
then vice-prime minister, and now President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev 
during their visit in January 2008 in Sofia. The question was also 
discussed during meetings of Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev 
with the Russian counterparts, as well as during talks between foreign 
ministers Ivailo Kalfin and Sergei Lavrov. Last week, Russian President 
Medvedev announced in Moscow, that the issue of Cyrillic domain names is 
an important one, and on his political agenda.

"We believe that the initiative, which we discussed with our Russian 
friends in the last months, is a clear fact about the importance which 
Bulgaria has in the world Internet. It is an example not only about the 
historical meaning of the Cyrillic alphabet in the world arena, but also 
about the fact that through Bulgaria it became an official alphabet of 
the European Union. By sending this letter to Dr. Twomey -- ICANN's 
president and my friend, SAITC expresses not only the wish, but the 
readiness to put the Cyrillic IDNs on the Internet map", says Plamen 
Vatchkov. "There's nothing more natural than the proposed domain to be 
the country code, which is already known and accepted in the country 
itself. Creating domains in scripts, different from the Latin, is the 
next big step in the development of the Internet, which will allow 
millions of people who don't use English to have easier access to the 
Global Net resources".

SAITC is organizing a meeting later this year in Sofia, where all 
countries, using Cyrillic will be invited - Belarus, Bulgaria, 
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Mongolia, Russia, Serbia, Tajikistan, 
Uzbekistan and Ukraine. The meeting will be dedicated to discussion 
about IDNs.

for more information:
Press Center
phone +359-2-9492368
"Ekaterina Popova" <epopova at daits.government.bg 
<mailto:epopova at daits.government.bg>>



/Ms. Dessi Pefeva,
Internet Society - Bulgaria/