Negotiators seeking to avert a U.S.-EU showdown at this week's U.N. summit on the information society watered down language on the Internet's governance in talks Tuesday.
U.S. officials considered the vague language a signal that world leaders would ultimately agree to leaving the U.S. Commerce Department ultimately in charge of the Internet's addressing system.
"We're waiting until they pass something we can accept," said U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce Michael Gallagher.
Diplomats are eager to reach agreement before Wednesday's start of the World Summit on the Information Society, which is scheduled to last through Friday.
The summit was originally conceived to address the digital divide -- the gap between information haves and have-nots -- by raising both consciousness and funds for projects.
Instead, it has centered largely around Internet governance: oversight of the main computers that control traffic on the Internet by acting as its master directories so Web browsers and e-mail programs can find other computers.
That job is handled by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, a powerful group that ultimately answers to the U.S. government.
Since the latest round of talks began Sunday, the specific wording of the summit's draft declaration has evolved from "international management of the Internet," written by Pakistan, to far less specific language.
"We're two-thirds of our way to a good compromise," EU spokesman Martin Selmayr said.
The EU has been mediating between the United States and a group of countries including China and Iran that have sought to replace ICANN with a multi-country group under U.N. auspices.
Washington set a course for confrontation when it declared in June that it will retain such oversight indefinitely, despite what many countries thought was a longstanding policy to one day completely turn the function over to ICANN as a new, independent technical agency of the United Nations.
The EU responded in September by insisting that some sort of new combination of governments and the private sector share the responsibility of policing the Internet. EU is asking for a 'neutral management of the internet'.
Already, rights watchdogs say, both Tunisian and foreign reporters on hand for the summit have been harassed and beaten. Reporters Without Borders says its secretary-general, Robert Menard, has been banned from attending at the insistence of ICANN and the United States.
Civil groups also accused the government Tuesday of blocking access within Tunisia to a Web site devoted to a citizens' summit held in conjunction with the main U.N. event.
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