U.S. refuses to sign U.N. treaty

Western nations want to keep unregulated nature of Internet. Iran, China, African states seek control.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Envoys from nearly 90 nations signed Friday the first new U.N. telecommunications treaty since the Internet age, but the U.S. and other Western nations refused to join after claiming it endorses greater government control over cyberspace.

The head of the U.N. telecoms group pushed back against the American assertions, defending the accord as necessary to help expand online services to poorer nations and add more voices to shape the direction of modern communications technology.

Hamadoun Toure’s remarks highlighted the wide gaps and hard-fought positions during the past 10 days of global talks in Dubai.

The negotiations essentially pitted the West’s desire to preserve the unregulated nature of the Net against developing countries yearning for better Web access and strong-arm states such as Iran and China that closely filter cyberspace.

The final break late Thursday was not over specific regulations in the U.N. group’s first telecoms review since before the Internet was a global force. Instead, it came down to an ideological split over the nature of the Internet and who is responsible for its growth and governance.

More than 20 countries joined the U.S. on Friday in refusing to sign the protocols by the U.N.’s International Telecommunications Union, or ITU, claiming it opens the door to greater government controls of the Net and could be used by authoritarian states to justify further crackdowns on cyberspace.

Rival countries — including Iran, China and African states — insist the governments should have a greater sway over Internet affairs and seek to break a perceived Western grip on information technology. They also favor greater international help to bring reliable online links to the world’s least-developed regions.

The ITU — which dates to the age of the telegraph in the mid19th century — has no technical powers to change how the Internet operates or force countries to follow its nonbinding accords, which also dealt with issues such as mobile phone roaming rates and international emergency numbers.