[ICANN news release] ICANN President and Chief Executive Officer, Fadi Chehadé says he is prioritising efforts to reach a resolution with domain name registrars in the on-going negotiations to achieve a Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA).Chehadé said he will also become personally involved in ICANN’s efforts to establish a Trademark Clearing House prior to the introduction of new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) in 2013.”I’m going to be inserting myself personally in both these issues,” said Chehadé. “I’ve already discussed this with the community and there’s frankly universal agreement that if I participate personally in these activities, I could help us come to hopefully reasonable conclusions that we can all bank on in moving forward to next year and with the new gTLDs”The chief executive made the comments during a video interview at the close of the organisation’s 45th public meeting in Toronto. 1,800 People from around the world registered for the meeting, making it the second largest in ICANN history.The meeting began only a few days after ICANN announced a plan to use a draw, or drawing, to determine which gTLD applications would be prioritised. This system would be used as a way to equitably schedule the release of initial evaluation results, pre-delegation testing, and contract execution.When asked to characterise the reaction he had received to the plan for a draw Chehadé said, “There is a collective sigh of relief that we have a mechanism that is equitable, that is fair, that is very transparent and simple in many ways and which allows us to move forward.”During the same video interview, Board Chair Dr. Stephen Crocker said his take-away from the Toronto meeting was “progress across every front.”ICANN’s next public meeting will be 7-11 April 2012 in Beijing.
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To view the video interview with the CEO and Board Chair, go here: www.icann.org/en/news/press/kits/toronto45/video-post-meeting-19oct12-en.htm