WASHINGTON-The State Department’s top telecom official Wednesday said decisions have yet to be made on who will lead the U.S. delegation and represent the Bush administration at December’s World Summit on Information Society in Geneva.
Ambassador David Gross, deputy assistant secretary of state for international communications and information policy, told industry representatives those decisions as well as others on the makeup of the U.S. delegation and composition of the U.S. position paper to be transmitted to the WSIS are being worked out.
Some private-sector parties at Wednesday’s State Department meeting questioned how U.S. interests will be furthered at the meeting, with one industry representative voicing concern about whether developing countries might unite on telecom-information technology policy principles at odds with the Bush administration, potentially repeating the dynamic that doomed September global trade talks in Cancun, Mexico.
Gross said he believed WSIS is too important for the United States and industry to downplay, even if that means using the conference as a stage to air differences.
More than 50 heads of state are expected to attend WSIS in December. The second phase of the summit is scheduled for Nov. 10-14, 2005, in Tunisia.
