Address of the UN General Secretary to the participants of WIF-2000

Moscow, Kremlin, October 24, 2000

It is a great pleasure to me to transmit greetings to all who take part in the work of this World Forum in Moscow.

The world is now in the center of the information revolution. The information and the knowledge are being spread quickly from the point of view of size as well as from the point of view of accessibility. New communication technologies give to the people who adopt the decisions new unprecedented instruments for security of future development. It is pleasant to me to notice that International Informatization Academy inserts its income and experience in the development of these positive tendencies.

At the same time the half of the world population has never called by telephone and has not received the telephone calls and never walked alone the sites of world information net. The gap between information witch is at the disposal of the people and that witch they have not grows steadily and there is a really danger of that fact that poor and unfortunate people will be excluded out of this world information revolution. In our becoming more and more interdependent world this is namely the thing witch has to make all of us be excited.

Informational technology is comparatively not expensive in comparison with other forms of capital. Less and less it depends upon the computers them-selves or main financial investments, but more and more it depends upon the wisdom of the Man. I believe that International Informatization Academy will as it was before seriously take part in decisions of many of these questions alongside with the information boom that will continue in Russian Federation itself. Uniting our forces we shall be able to put information technologies to the service of all humanity. In the spirit of all said above I am transmitting my best wish of the successful work to the Forum.

Kofi A. Annan