USA nekter å undertegne en FN-traktat om global telekommunikasjon som er blitt lagt frem under en konferanse i Dubai. Etter Obama-administrasjonens oppfatning ville traktaten innebære et samtykke til statlig sensur av internett.

“We can’t conceive of a signing the text without a major revision at this point,” a senior administration official said Thursday, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

The treaty has been debated at a conference in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, sponsored by the International Telecommunications Union, a U.N. organization. ITU officials had said earlier that the meeting was not going to be a referendum on Internet freedom. The agency’s mission is focused mostly on setting technical standards for global phone calls.

But late Wednesday night, according to the administration official, the conference chairman, Mohamed Nasser al-Ghanim, director general of the Telecommunication Regulation Authority of the UAE, inserted text in the treaty that included the restrictive Internet provisions.

“At that point, it became clear to us that there was probably no path toward signature here,” the official said.

Tatt i betraktning hvem som ønsket disse restriktive elementene i traktaten (Russland, Kina, Iran, Saudi-Arabia, Emiratene etc.) kan ikke dette ha vært noen vanskelig beslutning.

Washington Post: U.S. refuses to back U.N. treaty, saying it endorses restricting the Internet