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UN Web summit splits
rich, poor countries
Some nations want new UN agency to govern Internet GENEVA (AP) - A United Nations summit aimed at expanding global access to information technology opens Wednesday with rifts between industrialized and developing countries threatening to overshadow the main objectives. One key dispute is over who should rule the Internet. Developing countries including China, South Africa, India and Brazil want to wrest control from a private, U.S.-selected organization and place it with a proposed intergovernmental group, possibly under the United Nations. If countries don't believe their concerns are adequately heard by the Internet's key decision-makers, a UN official warned, they may unilaterally create conflicting national policies and even set up their own networks within their borders. "The medium itself can be fragmented," said Sarbuland Khan, co-ordinator of the UN Task Force on Information and Communications Technologies. That "can make it difficult for the Internet to remain a free and interchangeable medium of exchange." Given the extent of the disagreements, the world's leaders will likely conclude this week's World Summit on the Information Society by essentially ducking the issue and directing UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to convene a working group. That group, to include government, business and civic leaders, would be directed to come up with a proposal for the second and final phase of the summit, in Tunisia in 2005. Advocates of creating a separate treaty-based UN agency for Internet governance have offered only vague blueprints, saying it could be modelled after the International Telecommunications Union, which organized this week's summit. Yoshio Utsumi, the ITU's secretary general, said today his agency would be capable of assuming the responsibility, "but it's up to members to decide. At this moment, there is no consensus." On another issue before the gathering in this city where the World Wide Web was invented 13 years ago, the United States and other industrialized countries have resisted Senegal's calls for a separate pool of money to finance technology projects in poorer countries. But delegates reached a compromise of sorts today: Countries that want a fund can create one, while skeptics - including the United States, Japan and the European Union - agreed to a study next year. No funding commitments were immediately announced. The discussions over funding and governance, along with media freedom, have taken the spotlight away from the multitude of digital divide projects being announced or showcased at the summit. Some 16,000 people signed up to attend, including more than 50 world leaders, mostly from developing countries. President George W. Bush is staying home, as is Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany despite previous announcements that he would attend. One key person present is Paul Twomey, chief executive of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which the U.S. government selected in 1998 to oversee the Internet's core addressing systems. It is Twomey's group that is under attack by some developing countries, and he even found himself escorted out of a meeting room Friday where negotiators were discussing his organization's fate. Although ICANN still answers to the U.S. Commerce Department, Twomey said the organization has tried to represent global needs by opening offices abroad and having board members from other countries. Twomey is Australian. But ICANN still is largely seen as a U.S. body. Hans Klein, chairman of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, said governments are legitimately worried that the U.S. government can suddenly impose policies contrary to their interests. For instance, Klein said, the United States might remove from central databases the domain names for countries deemed sponsors of terrorism, essentially kicking them off line. Developing countries also have been frustrated that western countries that used the Internet first gobbled up most of the available addresses required for computers to connect, leaving developing countries to share a limited supply. And some countries want faster approval of domain names in non-English characters - China even threatened a few years ago to split the Internet in two and set up its own naming system for Chinese. Nonetheless, ICANN does have support elsewhere. Tim Mertens, who runs a
consortium of European domain name operators, said an intergovernmental
alternative would only mean lengthy decision-making.
The
Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy" Groupe de communication Mulindwas "avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie" |
