By Andy Sullivan
Negotiators agreed on Tuesday to set up a global forum to discuss online crime, but appeared unlikely to resolve a dispute about control of the Internet ahead of a U.N. technology summit.
In talks before 50 heads of state arrive for the World Summit on the Information Society on Wednesday, negotiators said their work would likely lead to a crime-fighting forum that could help law enforcers track down online criminals who operate across borders.
But they did not seem set to approve language that would force the United States to give up its exclusive oversight of the domain-name system that guides traffic across the Internet.
The work proceeded slowly as negotiators debated whether to describe an Internet body as a "framework" or "mechanism" in one paragraph, before settling on "framework and mechanisms."
"This was supposed to be a compromise text but now it has been changed and bruised beyond recognition," Ambassador Masood Kahn, the Pakistani diplomat who served as a referee, said after reviewing 12 different versions of another paragraph.
The summit was launched two years ago to bridge the technology gap between rich and poor countries, but the U.S. control over the domain-name system has become a sticking point for countries like Iran and Brazil, who argue the system should be managed by the United Nations or some other global body.
The United States says an international bureaucracy would stifle innovation and create uncertainty that could scare away investors, though it does not oppose an international forum to discuss crime and other online issues, as long as it does not have regulatory powers.
While such a forum could be productive it must not be allowed to take on any formal powers that could usurp the United States' position, U.S. Assistant Commerce Secretary Michael Gallagher told Reuters.
But the European Union will continue to push for more international control of the domain-name system in meetings after the summit next year, one EU official said.
"Oversight is a taboo word for the United States," said the official, who declined to be named.
The head of the International Telecommunications Union, the U.N. body sponsoring the summit, said the increased attention would ensure the United States runs the domain-name system responsibly even if no agreement was reached.
"When we started this process seven years ago ... nobody knew that one country was managing everything. Now it is transparent, and you are discussing," ITU Secretary-General Yoshio Utsumi told a news conference.
(Additional reporting by Astrid Wendlandt)
Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited.
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