TUNIS - The World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia drew to a close Friday with a pledge to drive the IT revolution into poor countries and promote the expansion of the Internet.
Participants praised Tunisia for its success in organizing the biggest-ever UN sponsored summit.
Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was pleased with summit outcome, emphasizing the fact that the world is committed to bridge the digital devide.
After attracting 176 countries and more than 17,000 participants, the World Summit for the Information Society endorsed a "Tunis Commitment", and a "Tunis Agenda for the Information Society".
Both largely reaffirmed promises made at a first summit in Geneva two years ago to intensify finance and practical help to allow poor countries to reap the economic and social benefits of information technology.
They also included an agreement to broaden discussions about control of the Internet over the next five years.
The organisers, the UN's International Telecommunications Union (ITU), is aiming to connect all villages in the world to the Internet by 2015.
Western governments came under pressure at the end of keynote UN communications summit Friday, after a pledge to connect poor countries to the IT revolution brought little more funding.
The World Summit for the Information Society also revealed stark differences over freedom of speech.
"This is just the beginning," the secretary general of the UN's International Telecommunications Union (ITU), Yushio Utsumi said.
He hinted at disappointment with the absence of major western leaders in Tunis.
"Their understanding of the issue is limited," Ustumi told reporters, adding that western governments' comprehension was evolving "but not, I have to say, enough yet".
Telecoms in developing countries have been growing at twice the rate of their wealthy counterparts, but they were starting from a far smaller base, the ITU said.
By 2003 the developing world accounted for one-fifth of global telecoms revenue.
"In Manhattan, there are more telephones than in the whole of Africa," Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade commented.
"Africa is still disconnected from the world and it's not because a few people have computers that anything will change," he added.
A voluntary "Digital Solidarity Fund", set up this year after being shunned by rich nations in Geneva, gained explicit recognition in the agenda as one means of finance.
The fund for local IT projects championed by some developing leaders has now garnered about eight million euros, mainly from regions and cities, and the organisers are trying to attract private sector finance.
Ustumi acknowledged a "gap" on financing and the top Swiss development aid official, Walter Fust, criticised the overall western response.
"I am rather critical in saying that there seems to be greater consciousness in the private sector of the opportunities to press IT use forward in developing countries than there is in some development and cooperation ministries," Fust said.
The proposed summit agenda acknowledged that overall "current financing levels have not been adequate", especially for IT in education, remote rural areas, and broadband networks that are at the core of the modern Internet.
Rich countries at the summit placed the emphasis on existing finance, loans, and less regulation to encourage investment by private industry -- mainly western companies.
British Industry Minister Alun Michaels, representing the EU presidency, told the summit it was up to poor countries to take whatever funding they needed from existing European Union aid.
A plethora of bilateral IT assistance projects were on display at the summit's trade fair, including the first prototype of a 100-dollar laptop meant to be distributed for free to millions of schoolchildren in poor countries.
China remarked during the summit that some government control over Internet sites was desirable, despite a call by the 2003 Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi to halt attempts by authorities to filter out critical websites.
French Finance Minister Thierry Breton, a former telecoms executive, told the summit freedom of information was "the motor of the explosive development of the Internet".
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