Deal avoids global split over Internet control

0 Comments | AFP, November, 2005

TUNIS (AFP) — Negotiators avoided a potentially damaging split between the United States and the rest of the world over control of the Internet, saying they had agreed to work towards enhanced international cooperation.

Diplomats said a working group reached an agreement on key clauses on Internet governance for endorsement at the World Summit on the Internet Society beginning in Tunis on Wednesday.

A three-year deadlock in preliminary talks until the late hours of Tuesday had revolved around Washington's single-handed oversight of the private body that oversees the technical and administrative roots of the global network

The agreement set up two parallel tracks of talks, one an open-ended process "towards enhanced cooperation" by "relevant international...