The 33rd Assembly of Parties of the International Telecommunications Satellite Organisation (ITSO) held an extraordinary session last 8-9 July in Rome, which was chaired by Portugal through Saraiva Mendes, representing the Ministry of Public Works, Transport and Communications.
The Assembly contained only one single agenda point: to decide whether the majority of the 149 States comprising the organisation would approve the proposal by the outgoing director general (DG), Ahmed Toumi of Morocco, to begin contentious judicial proceedings by recourse to arbitration against the Notifying Administrations (USA and United Kingdom), with respect to co-ordination of orbital positions of the Common Heritage (CH) in line with article XII(e)(iv) of the ITSO Agreement.
The Assembly nevertheless rejected the litigation proposal from the then DG, and agreed on a text enabling a consensus based on the two proposals under discussion and providing guarantees to the various players in the process: the ITSO will be consulted before sending notifications on co-ordination of CH orbital positions to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and be given a 30-day period for comments; the Notifying Administrations and the operator Intelsat obtained the commitment that such notification will protect the confidentiality of any information of a commercial nature.
The AP also opted to set up a Frequency working party (FWP), similar to the past one, which will advise the new DG on implementation of the procedure agreed on in Rome and, in the future, on all issues involving the Common Heritage. The FWP should be trained by a frequency management expert indicated by each regional vice president.
To place things in context, note that it was the outgoing director general’s understanding that the Notifying Administrations did not fulfil the obligation to notify and consult the director general beforehand on issues concerning the management of ITSO orbital positions, which are operated by the private company Intelsat and co-ordinated by those administrations.
An intense negotiation process has been under way between the ITSO executive body and the Negotiating Administrations since the last AP (October 2008 in Estoril). The Estoril Assembly set a 6-month deadline (which ended on 10 April 2009) to resolve the differences between the parties. If the parties did not reach agreement, then the Assembly should decide whether to go ahead with the establishment of an arbitration panel.
The new ITSO director general, José Toscano of Portugal, who took office last 18 July, should henceforth work with the Notifying Administrations and put into practice the set of procedures that have just been approved and whose effectiveness will be subject to the Parties’ scrutiny within one year’s time.
The next Assembly of Parties should meet in July 2010.
