ICANN is currently answerable to the US Department of Commerce. Earlier this year the department announced that it would indefinitely maintain a supervisory role over ICANN, instead of relinquishing this role in September 2006 as previously agreed.

The United States supported maintaining the authority of ICANN throughout negotiations on the grounds that diluting its authority could have a negative impact on the security and stability of the internet.

A group of countries, principally the European countries, backed by Brazil, China and Iran, pushed for ICANN to be replaced by an international group supervised by the UN.

Although this request was not directly fulfilled, an international Internet Governance Forum (IGF) will be established, with representatives form the private sector, from governments and from civil society. According to David Gross, the US State Department's top internet policy official, the forum will be able to treat "addressing issues ... cybercrime and any other issue its participants want to bring up."

The first meeting of the IGF will take place in Athens in early 2006, the body is purely consultative and will have no binding authority.

Masood Khan, head of the working group that brokered the agreement, asserted that even those countries that initially argued against ICANN retaining its powers eventually agreed that the body has the technical expertise required to make the present system work.

Press reactions to the agreement have been mixed in Europe. 

In an article entitled www.thewebisours.usa, German Der Spiegel makes the following comment on the United States' position regarding internet governance: "It's an open-and-shut case for the United States. True to form, the US's preferred candidate is the only power it truly trusts: itself."

The UK's Independent characterises the role of ICANN to date as one of "benign hegemony", and questions whether the alternative of an international internet governing body is really a good one, given that "The countries leading the calls for control of the internet to be internationalised, under the aegis of the UN, are the same ones that have led the way in censoring their own citizens."

In France, Le Monde is more polemical, saying that "Washington considers itself as the only ruler of the online universe as well as as the real world!"

Sources: The Independent here and here, Le Monde, (and print edition) MediaGuardian, Der Spiegel, The New York Times