Control of Internet to stay in U.S.

NEW YORK, Dec. 10 (UPI) -- European and U.S. officials hailed the World Summit on the Information Society Wednesday for delaying until 2005 considering who should run the Internet.

Society members, who began their first formal meeting Wednesday in New York, agreed during the weekend simply to create a working group of industry, government and public sector experts to discuss the issue and make recommendations at the next society meeting in 2005.

For now, key decisions about Internet standards, technology and regulation will continue to be made by an array of U.S. private sector organizations.

The most visible of these is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which has operated the global domain name system since 1988, under an agreement with the U.S. government.

While some nations have called for control of the Internet to be handed to an international body, European, U.S. and Japanese officials oppose such moves.

"We welcome the development of a preliminary consensus," U.S. State Department spokesman John Finn said.

"And that no changes to the current governance structure associated with the internet should be made by the summit."