Summit makes call to 'wire up' world
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U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan speaks during the opening of the World Summit on the Information Society
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GENEVA, Switzerland (Reuters) -- More than 170 countries approved an ambitious call to extend the Internet and the benefits of information technology to the poorest corners of the world Friday, but dodged some of the difficulties of doing so.
In particular, they put off a decision on whether to set up a special fund to finance the necessary infrastructure, for which African countries had lobbied hard.
The first World Summit on the Information Society wound up three days of lofty speech-making by endorsing a declaration of principles and 29-point action plan.
The declaration committed them to using telecommunications technologies, such as the Worldwide Web and cellular telephones, to boost economic growth and meet United Nations development targets for eradicating extreme hunger and poverty by 2015.
"The declaration represents a sort of constitution for the Information Society which must contain a social dimension and foster development," said Swiss President Pascal Couchepin, whose country hosted the U.N.-sponsored gathering.
Around 90 percent of the world population is not connected to the Internet, depriving them of a 21st-century resource and digging a "digital divide" between rich and poor. But richer states, notably Japan and the European Union, which generally did not send top government officials to Geneva, resisted calls for a "Solidarity Fund" to close the gap.
As a compromise, states agreed to study the issue further and report back before the follow-up summit in Tunis in 2005.
Senior U.N. officials also agreed it was better to explore improved use of existing resources from the World Bank and other sources before rushing into new finances.
"It must take its place in line along with health and education. It has to be linked to investment in these areas otherwise it would be just a waste of public money," said Mark Mallock Brown, head of the U.N. Development Program (UNDP).
Also postponed was a showdown over Internet management, with developing countries such as Brazil pressing for a greater role for the United Nations or intergovernmental agencies in a business currently left to the private sector in rich states.
The liberal democracies won a tough battle in the preparation stage to have press freedom and the right of access to information enshrined in the summit documents.
But activists said it was ironic that while most Western leaders stayed away, the summit was attended by a number of figures, including Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, whose governments have been accused of hobbling local media.
They promised to campaign for the second summit to be withdrawn from Tunisia unless there was a sharp improvement in the human rights situation in the North African state.
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