NGO-Dialogue All members of the Ilisu consortium recognize the role of the non-governmental organizations (NGO) as part of the civil society. Therefore, and because of the background of the massive opposition of the Ilisu hydro-electric power plant by NGOs from the German-speaking countries, the consortium initiated and conducted since one year an open dialogue with the involved NGOs. As a proof of the basic understanding of this transparency and readiness for dialogue the consortium leader prepared and established at the beginning of the dialogue the following policy.   NGO Policy for the ILISU Project  "VA Tech hydro has traditionally good relations with the representatives of the civil society (NGOs), active in Austria, in form of regular discussions as well as roundtables. Since September 2004 VA Tech Hydro has established regular contacts with Austrian NGOs about "Ilisu". Beside a series of individual discussions VA Tech Hydro has conducted in regular intervals roundtable talks. The organisations involved in this process are  the ECA Watch Austria as well as group of organisations which constitute the latter (WWF, Greenpeace, Coordination Centre of the Austrian Bishop Conference, Global 2000, Society for Threatened Peoples) as well as Amnesty International Austria. Thus VA Tech Hydro pursues the intention to inform the NGOs actively and in accordance with the respective current developments of the project without prejudice to project information sensitive for the client, the consortium members as well as the involved ECAs. With this dialogue an possible emotion-driven public discussion with lacking facts and figures should be avoided in any case." Key facts out of the NGO dialogue September 2004: Establishment of the dialogue by discussions with ECA Watch Austria; in the sequence regular, at least monthly, contacts up to autumn 2005 October 2004 until February 2005: Personal discussion dates with the representatives of the member organizations of ECA Watch Austria November 2004: Threat to scandalise the Ilisu project and the involved VA Tech Hydro by ECA Watch Austria. Until March 2005 all project-relevant questions raised by the involved NGOs were collected in written form by VA Tech Hydro 31. March 2005: A broad discussion round between two experts of the VA Tech Hydro and eight NGO representatives: In this meeting the substantial questions of the NGOs collected earlier were answered, and fundamental questions in connection with Ilisu and the calendar of expected actions clarified. Further a next meting date was agreed for the time when the update of the EIAR-report and the RAP-report is available. June 2005: Another threat to scandalise the Ilisu project by ECA Watch Austria, in which it was tried also to generally attack VA Tech Hydro as a company in negative form. from November 2005: continuation of the dialogue with the austrian NGOs 6. December 2005: the Consortium presented in this meeting with all involved NGOs (including WEED and EvB) the RAP and the UEIAR in its essenceand offered their readyness for further dialogue from January 2006 on. This offer unfortunately was not accepted. 8. March 2006: on invitation of the swiss export credit agency ERG a stakeholder meeting in Zurich took place. Participants were the Consortium, several NGOs and representants of the Government and of several commercial banks. The same day EvB floated a press release massively criticising the project again. In this information EvB announced to bring a local "Anti-Ilisu-Delegation" in May 2006 to Switzerland. 28. March 2006: ECA Watch Austria (Nonno Breuss), WEED (Heike Drillisch) and EvB (Christine Eberlein) send a common letter to the Consortium stating: "Proceeding with the dialogue is only useful for us with the commitment that the project is not executed on basis of the existing studies. 15.-18. May 2006: The Anti-Ilisu-Delegation, led by the three NGOs visits Germany, Austria and Switzerland supported by prepared public work: with press conferences,public podium discussions and launched media reports again a negative image of Ilisu project should be generated 23. August 2006: on invitation of the austrian ECA OeKB a discussion between the NGOs and the Consortium under participation of ECAs and Austrian Government Authorities took place from November 2006 on: NGOs did not respond to invitations regarding further dialogue-meetings