Arabic Internet Names Consortium Sets Founders Meeting

Amman is to host the founders meeting of the 'Arabic Internet Names Consortium' and the seminar on the 'Arabization of Domain Names' in Jordan

Saudi Arabia, Arabia.com, 20 March 2001 -- The Jordanian capital, Amman, will host on March 31 and April 1, the founders meeting of the Arabic Internet Names Consortium (AINC) and the Seminar on the Arabization of Domain Names.

These meetings are held under the patronage of King Abdullah II and organized by Talal Abu – Ghazaleh International (TAGI) on behalf of the Arabic Working Group of Multilingual Internet Names Consortium (MINC).  Representatives of governments, ministries, governmental and non – governmental bodies, and diverse business interests from Jordan and other Arab countries will attend.

AINC is an international organization drawing its membership and soliciting participation from organizations and individuals worldwide in an inclusive way.  It is founded for the facilitation of the internationalization of the Internet for all Arabic speaking people of the world, allowing access without linguistic barriers at all levels.
The objective of the AINC is to coordinate efforts to develop and deploy Arabic Domain Names system and applications.  This non-commercial coordination includes providing users with the capability of using the Arabic language and its standard characters set to write domain names in Arabic and navigate the Internet.

Diverse Representation
Many representatives of governments, ministries, governmental, and non-governmental bodies and diverse business interests will be represented.

Mr. Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, Chairman of the ICC Commission on "Telecommunications and Information Technologies" and the Chairman of AINC Founding Meeting, expressed his gratitude that with his Majesty’s patronage, "It is indeed a great honor to have his Majesty King Abdullah II, a global leader of the knowledge revolution, patronize this historic event.

TAGI is honored to host the founders meeting of the Arabic Internet Names Consortium (AINC) in Amman, especially that this is the first meeting of an ICANN related organization to be held in the Hashimite Kingdom of Jordan" , he said.

Mr. Abu-Ghazaleh added that "AINC's main objective is to ‘Arabize’ domain names, as the present domain names system accepts only Latin letters.  The Arabic language will become, later this year, one of the few languages that could be used for registering domain names, together with other international languages.

We are expecting that later this year, it will be possible to have an ‘Arabized’ program, which will be installed on the computer to allow it to translate the Arabic character to ASCII that will be understandable by the DNS.  The Arabic Workgroup of the MINC has already prepared its requirements and it will be implemented by i–DNS and Network Solutions Inc. (NSI), the registry of the generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs).  Some other companies announced too that they will introduce technologies for the Arabic Domain Names".

As for the Internet Arabization Seminar, which will be held in the Hayatt Regency Hotel, Mr. Abu–Ghazaleh indicated that it will be dealing with specialized technical papers presented by experts in this field, and there will be an opportunity for open discussions.  After that, the Amman Declaration will be issued, officially announcing the foundation of the Arabic Internet Names Consortium.
 
Background Info
Pursuant to the points of agreement arrived during the Symposium on Arabic Internet Domain Names in Dubai, held on the 29th of October 2000, and other previous meetings relating to Arabic Internet names and the formation of the Arabic Internet Names Consortium, interested parties were invited to sign as Founding Members of the Arabic Internet Names Consortium and to participate in its formation by signing the Letter of Intent (LOI).

The following have signed the LOI to join as Founding Members of the Arabic Internet Names Consortium.  Note: Those who wish to join as Founding Members but have not signed the LOI above, please sign and fax the copy to the MINC Secretariat at +65-779-0724 as soon as possible.

1. Wael Nasr (LOI signed) Director, Middle East Business Development i-DNS.net International Inc. http://www.i-dns.net
2. Asaad Y. Alnajjar (LOI signed) CEO Millennium Inc. http://www.any-dns.com
3. Khaled Fattal (LOI signed) CEO IBE Limited
4. Kanngard Lars Olof (LOI signed) Dubai Internet City / DIDRA http://didra.org
5. Nasser Alshawaf (LOI signed) Shebaak.com http://shebaak.com
6. Zakaria Amar (LOI signed) Professor, IT Department University of Mauritania http://www.univ-nkc.mr
7. John Hawkins (LOI signed) Director Walid Inc. http://www.walid.com
8. Jarallah Aljarallah C.O.O. NativeNames http://www.nativenames.net
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