Instead, they agreed on a compromise "Digital Solidarity Agenda" for formal endorsement by about 150 governments, including some heads of state, at the World Summit on the Information Society starting on Wednesday, the top negotiator said.

Marc Furrer, head of the Swiss Federal Office of Communication, said European Union, Canadian and Japanese government negotiators had agreed to look into what a fund could do by December 2004, while African states could go ahead with funding.

"Every country sees that we need new resources to bridge the digital divide," Furrer told journalists, admitting that Western countries were skeptical about the value of another, separate international fund.

"Some want to create it and the others must at least study the fund. It was a hard fight," he added, after trying to broker an agreement during the final session of talks.

But Senegales President Abdoulaye Wade was adamant that African countries needed the fund to latch onto the digital revolution, even if they were ready to turn not only to governments but private companies, individuals and city authorities in the West for investment.

"We launched the idea of digital solidarity because we can't buy this equipment, we can't afford it," he told journalists.

Wade underlined that the money would be used in turn to buy equipment from companies in industrialised countries, with the aim of making a computer accessible to about 80 percent of families in Africa.

"It's not a unilateral gift," he added.

Furrer said negotiators had also drafted a final text for a political declaration and plan of action for the summit, which officials hope will spur political commitment to broadening access to Internet and communications technologies.

"This recognition of the objective of Internet and communications technologies is the objective of the summit," said Yoshio Utsumi, secretary-general of the UN's International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the organisers of the summit.

The ITU chief also acknoweldged that controversial attempts to place his agency in charge of global regulation of the Internet had been put off and placed in the hands of a working group under UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

The outstanding issues are due to be put to the second phase of the summit in Tunis in 2005, Utsumi added.

As delegates and heads of state started to arrive, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned them not to harm freedom of the press and freedom of expression.

"It is one thing for governments to establish regulatory and policy frameworks, but when they go further down the slope towards censorship and harrassment, all of us and potentially all our rights are imperilled," Annan said.

Annan was speaking at the launch of the World Electronic Media Forum, a joint thinktank set up by the UN and private and state broadcasters worldwide to look into the media's role in bridging the digital divide.

Heads of world broadcasting associations handed Annan a declaration for the summit, urging governments to protect their independence.

About 12,000 people, including a few dozen government leaders are expected to attend the summit in Geneva, home to the United Nations' European headquarters.

They hope to set out a global framework so that all countries can benefit from the information age, a term used to describe the boosted flow of information and knowledge brought about by mobile telephones, Internet access and electronic media.

SPACE.WIRE