the decision

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Hello members, athletes and sports friends Very happy welcome from Olympic Park - scene of London 2012 Olympics! This is Craig Crowley, ICSD President and I would like to thank IOC for inviting me and CEO as guests here at London Olympics where we met so many IOC and International Federations members. Now I would like to give you a brief progress report on Sofia 2013 Deaflympics Of course it's normal for many countries who may be starting to become nervous about the situation. Since the decision for the go ahead with Sofia last May ICSD and Bulgaria have been working out for the last 2 months to make sure we have the right contract in place and we already secured services of our professional sports legal adviser Our adviser will make sure of the right regulations to the new contract for Deaflympics so as to avoid repeat of previous cancellations. As you know we have met Bulgarian Sports Minister Svilen Neykov here at London 2012 Olympics and we have also been liaising with the Bulgarian Sports Ministry and Deaf Sport Federation on regular basis and I am happy to inform members that their Deputy Sports Minister Lazar Kamenov is now head of Sofia 2013 Organising Committee which itself is a important role given the Government's approval & commitment to host Sofia 2013 Games. The Council of Bulgarian Government Ministers (of which Sports Ministry is part of) were already planning to formalise contractual arrangements once the Olympics & Paralympics are finished and that their Government returns from summer recess then we can pull out all the financial details together with the numbers of athletes/officials received from different countries via preliminary form. Bulgaria will also be preparing a draft Games(logistics) plan for Sofia 2013 and they will send out their roll-out plan to our members by around mid September to mid-October so as to help member countries prepare plans for sending teams to Sofia in 2013 More news to come again soon Bye from Olympic Park, London! Thank you