Hi Detlef,

First, let me very clear in saying that I agree with nearly everything
you say.  Obviously, all the CPP participants agree about the usefulness
of such an effort, otherwise they would not be involved.  I also 
appreciate that you join in supporting the points that Zuheir, Pascal, 
and I have already made about the urgent need for long-term solutions.

However, I do not understand how you can then say that "the combination
groups should start ... with the weekly inter-technique combination"
despite the tie problems, etc.  In fact, this could be quite dangerous,
esp if these solutions were made available to the general public.  
Zuheir already warned about this danger in his message earlier this 
week.  Rather than help identify problems in the intra-technique 
solutions, it is more likely that weekly inter-technique combinations 
(in isolation, rather than in the long-term framework we outlined in 
Nice) would produce artifacts that cannot be intrepretted correctly at 
all.  So I personally would not trust those results to provide any 
useful feedback to the services, apart from such mechanical details as 
SINEX format problems.  The latter can be tested without making any 
combinations.  I have already pointed out problems with the IVS 
solutions, for instance.

If you feel that I am wrong about this, I do not seen any need to wait
to discuss the issue face-to-face in San Francisco.  Why not present
your results now, electronically?  If problems and issues can only be
discussed in workshop settings, then I fear there is no possibility of
making progress.  After all, we already discussed all these very same 
issues in Nice and nothing has been done about them since that time.

I would appreciate it if you could provide more specific suggestions
about how to move forward, apart from just having another meeting.

With thanks and best regards,
--Jim