Paris, Stockholm, Belgrad and Bled

 Another week starting up, and after some meetings in Stockholm in the morning I'm off to Paris.

It's for a meeting of the President's Strategy Committee of ICANN.

We are there in order to give strategic advice to the President of ICANN. And ICANN, of course, is the body that is the key to the global governance of the Internet.

These issues have been much in the debate in the last few years. A major UN conference in Tunis last year spent a long time discussing the global Internet governance issues, and the debate certainly hasn't gone away.

There are also important issues on the table between ICANN and the US government - some very technical, but all seen as having profound political implications.

So it will be interesting - and informal - discussions in Paris. Our task is only to give advice to the Board of ICANN - they are the ones to take the decisions.

From Paris I'm back in Stockholm for two days. It will be interesting to see how the work with a common election manifesto for the four parties in the centre-right alliance progresses.

But then it's onwards to Belgrade for discussions on the Balkan strategy of the European Union in general and the possibilities of Serbia in particular.

The country is in a somewhat difficult situation at the moment, but at the same time its potential is obvious. It is the key to the long-term European prospects for the region as a whole.

And from there I will go - the one way or the other - to Bled in Slovenia for a major conference on strategic prospects in the Black and Caspian Sea areas. It's a discussion not the least on energy possibilities and strategies.

Once upon a time, Belgrade and Bled was part of the same country, and I guess communication between them was fairly straightforward. But that was then. Now it's a different situations, and I'm still not certain of the least inconvenient way of getting from B to B.

An interesting week ahead.