Nations Urge U.S. to Cede Internet Control - Yahoo! News

[Excerpt from Yahoo! News]

President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe spoke for the more radical opposition to U.S. control, saying Washington and its allies cannot continue to "insist on being world policemen on the management of the Internet."

"Why should our diverse world be beholden to an American company?," he told more than 10,000 government, business and other delegates as the three-day U.N. World Summit on the Information Society opened Wednesday.

A quasi-independent group, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, manages the worldwide network's main addressing computers on the U.S. government's behalf.

Mugabe's remarks signaled that, despite the U.S. success in winning over a broad group of nations including the European Union bloc, underlying complaints about American hegemony in Internet control still linger.