WCIT Delegations Getting ‘Frustrated’ Over Lack of Progress

DUBAI -- After a full week of negotiations at the World Conference on International Telecommunication with little progress, “delegations are frustrated,” conference Chairman Mohamed Nasser Al Ghanim told us Monday. “This is the night,” one delegate said after Al Ghanim announced a late Monday night session.

Al Ghanim said he wanted to produce by Tuesday morning a text to be considered in the plenary and “in the spirit of compromise” and hoped to “basically have some text that will be signed by all member states available in this room.” There are “two camps,” he said. One has been willing to compromise, but the other has not, he said. The U.S. and EU were both seen as big opponents of moving in the direction of including the Internet or any content issues in any agreement.

Al-Ghanim has indicated he'll take all of the text generated in the conference so far and discuss it in high-level meetings Monday night and Tuesday morning with regional vice-chairs, a U.S. official said. The result will be a new proposed text of the entire treaty, which will be taken up in plenaries beginning Tuesday, the U.S. official said. The result will essentially be a “chairman’s draft,” based on all the existing contributions and agreed-to text up until now, the person said.

“The U.S. Delegation notes the fact that the multi-country proposal to the WCIT that was introduced last Friday by the UAE, and backed by Russia and other countries, will not now go forward at the WCIT,” Terry Kramer, head of the U.S. delegation, said in a statement. “While this is a welcome development, these issues will continue to be on the table for discussion in other forms during the remainder of the Conference. The United States will continue to make the case that the WCIT should maintain the scope of the ITRs and resist proposals to extend that scope into Internet governance or content."

One problem is the so-called compromise proposal by the United Arab Emirates (CD Dec 10 p4) , which was leaked Saturday by WCITleaks. Though the Russian and Chinese delegations that backed it called it a compromise, the U.S. and EU pointed out that it included broad definitions on telecommunications, on the kind of operators addressed and included the Russian Internet chapter, all of which they opposed. The U.S. delegation warned against making a substantive new proposal at this late stage in the conference.

"If tabled like this, it would divide the conference,” Al Ghanim said Monday. So he did not open discussion on either the joint UAE/Russia/China proposal or the Russian Internet chapter in the Monday plenary that had been expected to see a big fight over the issues. Egypt, named on the leaked document, openly distanced itself from it, saying: “We believe that the ITRs [international telecommunications regulations] are and should continue to be a high level Treaty discussing high level principles."

The UAE later told journalists that the WCITleaks documents had “flaws” and “WCITleaks was no official source.” The nation said it’s now looking forward to the summary proposal “that the Chair has promised."

The lack of compromise on core issues, especially the scope, has made consensus difficult and led to a lot of “bracketing” throughout the text.