Dear Jon (and others), during last week's RIPE meeting the question of start up toplevel domains has been discussed in the local registry working group. The concern (spawned by the situation in Lebanon) is that when first starting it is difficult to find a registrar acceptable to the community within the country and this could delay things very much. The RIPE NCC was asked and accepted to offer a temporary TLD registry service for start up TLDs in and around Europe as necessary. The procedure would be to wait for about a dozen registrations and then have the registered organisations agree on a local registrar. I hereby offer this service whenever you may think it is appropriate. Please note that we still feel that having a local registrar accepted by the local community is much preferrable to an external registrar. This offer is intended only to speed up the creation and population of new TLDs where necessary and appropriate. Regards Daniel