GENEVA, Dec 12: More than 170 countries approved on Friday an ambitious call to extend the Internet and the benefits of information technology to the poorest corners of the world, 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 a 29-point action plan, completed after hard bargaining just hours before the gathering got under way.

The declaration committed them to using telecommunications technologies, such as the Worldwide Web and mobile phones, 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.

But it was not just the wealthy states that opposed rushing into new financing. Senior U.N. officials agreed it was better first to explore improved use of existing resources from the World Bank and other sources.

“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 Programme (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.

“The right to freedom of opinion and expression is its (the declaration’s) essential foundation,” Couchepin said.

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 their 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.

The Human Rights Caucus, grouping some 45 organisations, called for an independent commission to be sent to Tunisia to talk to government opponents and political prisoners as well as officials to assess whether it was a suitable host. —Reuters