RSGB President Don Beattie comments further on the apparent manipulation of Draft Recommendation M

RSGB President Don Beattie comments further on the outcome of the Lillehammer Region 1 Conference - "No Morse"

RSGB President Don Beattie, G3OZF, has expressed surprise at the interpretation of events at the Lillehammer conference by VERON in their report of the conference published in Electron, November 1999, and by PA0LOU's comments at the Eurocom 2000 meeting in Friedrichshafen.

NCI commends Mr. Beattie for his candor and integrity in challenging and opposing what NCI believes to be an obvious attempt at circumvention of the democratic process from within certain IARU "inner circles."

The following text, in italics between the horizontal lines is a direct quote of Mr. Beattie's statement, which was obtained through the efforts of NCI's Netherlands Chapter National Chairman, Peter Halpin, PE1MHO, who is also a member of the RSGB.

"I am surprised. The minutes of the final plenary give confirmation to the agreement to paper 3.17, which had previously been voted on in Committee C3.

Voting in C3 was 26 in favour,7 against and 7 abstaining. Paper 3.17 clearly proposed excluding Morse from the future requirements for a licence, by defining the content of M-XXX (now known as M-AOQ).

The Lillehammer decision was further endorsed by the IARU AC immediately thereafter, when the AC took the text of paper 3.17 for their Resolution 99-1.

This is hardly a vote in favour of retaining Morse.

The papers clearly show the vote in favour of eliminating Morse as a future requirement for an HF licence. They also show support for the proposal on the wording of a proposed new version of Article S.25, which does not in itself cover the Morse issue, as operator qualifications are planned to be in M-XXX.

Immediately after the S.25 paper was agreed, the Conference discussed the content of M-XXX (now M-AOQ) and agreed "no Morse".

I am aware that the Chairman of Region 1 maintains that there was a vote in favour of retaining Morse at Lillehammer, but neither he nor anyone else has been able to point out where this took place, and where it is recorded"