Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and permit me to welcome you also on behalf of my colleagues and the members of the American Arbitration Association. We are delighted to be here with our friends at the ICC and with our partners at ICSID to once again benefit from the wisdom and experience of those of you who attend and participate in these day-long deliberations. My colleagues, Mr Plantey and Mr Shihata, have very fairly introduced the subject matter for the day. Therefore, I would like to take just a couple of minutes to report to you briefly on some of our international cooperative efforts in the spirit of advancing arbitration as referenced by Mr Plantey. In reporting to you very briefly on such international matters, I would like to mention first our pleasure at taking international arbitration to a further global extent through our presence as of the first of September on the Internet, the World Wide Web, where we will increasingly post information with respect to international arbitration. I think it may be of interest to you to know that in the first 60 days in which we had a presence on the Internet, we received 3,000 enquiries worldwide with respect to the subject of arbitration. I think that experience, again, is an indication of the potential and the growth that Mr Plantey has referenced to in his remarks.

Secondly, I am pleased to indicate our continuing support, and the support of others that are here, of the Willem C. Vis International Moot. This significant international arbitral moot, which will be held in Vienna in March, signals clearly the future and future leadership of the arbitration movement. This international moot will involve 37 law school teams from 19 different countries, and I would suggest that the future leadership of colloquia such as these will undoubtedly be represented in activities such as the Willem C. Vis Moot.

I am also very pleased to mention once again, in the spirit that brings our three institutions together here today, the announcement of the establishment of a tri-national entity for arbitral and meditation disputes for private parties under the NAFTA accords. On December 4, in New York, institutions from Canada (the BC Centre and the Quebec Centre) and from Mexico (CANACO, the Mexico City National Chamber of Commerce) and our Association will formally announce the creation of an entity to be called CAMCA, which translates well into French, Spanish and English, and which stands for the Commercial Arbitration and Mediation Centre for the Americas, for the resolution of private party disputes under NAFTA. Once again, this is a very discretely focused tri-national entity, but reflects the spirit of co-operation among several of the institutions that engage in these issues worldwide.

Next year the American Arbitration Association will have the pleasure of hosting the 1996 Joint Arbitration Colloquium, and it is our preliminary thinking that we might host these proceedings in a country other than the United States, perhaps Mexico or perhaps Canada, with the view of having persons interested in international arbitration in these settings to be able to participate in these important deliberations. We will consult with our Colloquium colleagues, of course, and once these points are established, we will be in touch with each of you with respect to program and date.

Again, it is our distinct pleasure to be here, and I look forward with you to today's deliberations. Thank you very much.