[governance] UN telcom agency says would be ready to run Internet

[William Drake]

More deft statecraft from a voluble source. Why screw around with this
Council thing when you can have ITU-I? As Adam said, the first rule of
comedy is timing...

------

UN telcom agency says would be ready to run Internet
Fri Sep 30, 2005 6:28 PM


GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations' International Telecommunications
Union (ITU) is ready to take over governance of the Internet from the
United States., ITU head Yoshio Utsumi said on Friday.

The United States has clashed with the European Union and much of the
rest of the world over the future of the Internet. It currently manages
the global information system through a partnership with
California-based company ICANN.

"We could do it if we were asked to," Utsumi told a news conference. The
U.N. agency's experience in communications, its structure and its
cooperation with private and public bodies made it best-placed to take
on the role, he said.

Washington has made clear it would oppose any such move despite
widespread demands for changes in the current system.

"We will not agree to the United Nations taking over management of the
Internet," said David Gross, a U.S. State Department official attending
a two-week conference preparing for a U.N. "Information Society Summit"
in Tunisia in November.

The United States, where the Department of Commerce oversees ICANN, says
it would never take any action that would affect the working of the
Internet. But countries like Iran say they fear Washington could pull
the plug on them any time.

The issue could sour the Tunis meeting from November 16-18.

The summit aims to approve a plan for extending use of the Internet and
other forms of advanced communications in order to help poorer countries
achieve U.N. development goals by 2015.

The EU says it is proposing a new "cooperative model" to run the
Internet and the way addresses - or domain names -- are assigned that
everyone could support.

But Gross, speaking to reporters on Thursday, described the plan as a
"shocking and profound change" of the EU's earlier stance that opened
the way for control by governments -- some of whom already censor what
their citizens can read on the Net.

EU spokesman David Hendon described this as "misrepresentation."

Although many EU nations were happy with what ICANN is doing, many
countries "just cannot accept that the Americans have control of the
Internet in their countries," he told Reuters, and this had to be
recognised.

The EU proposal would bring the Internet and ICANN under international
law rather than U.S. law.



C Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.



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