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TUNIS, Tunisia - The United States, in a fit of bravado and confident smiles, claimed victory this week in the contest to keep control of the computers crucial for directing Internet traffic.

But approval Friday of a plan to leave Washington squarely in charge hasn't ended the debate: The European Union and other countries are suggesting a new multinational forum, which delegates to a U.N. technology summit agreed to set up, delays the battle for another day. The forum, the countries say, still could ultimately leave several countries - and not only the United States alone - with key decisions about domain names and the computers that direct the Internet's flow of information, commerce and dissent.

The computers, known as root servers, act as the Internet's directories so Web browsers and e-mail programs can find other computers. Users around the world check those directories millions of times a day without ever knowing it.

Although Pakistan and other countries sought a takeover of the directories by an international body such as the United Nations, negotiators agreed late Tuesday to a create an nonbinding international forum for raising important Internet issues.

As the U.N. World Summit on the Information Society ended Friday, delegates from 174 countries approved a platform outlining the future of Internet governance along with prescriptions for expanding access worldwide and guarding the free flow of information, ideas and knowledge.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is expected to convene the new Internet Governance Forum early next year.

Details of the forum's agenda were still being worked out, but organizers said it would bring together government, business and civil leaders and could cover spam, cybercrime and other issues beyond the addressing system. Because negotiators had watered down language of the platform to reach agreement, many questions remain about how the forum might influence the United States and the quasi-independent agency to which it has delegated authority: the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

''The real result of [the summit] is that the debate over ICANN and Internet governance will be prolonged for another five years,'' said Milton Mueller, an Internet-governance expert at Syracuse University in New York. ''The U.S. can claim a short-term victory but faces a long-term war of attrition that will gradually erode its position.''

Annan was blunt in his assessment to the delegates.

''The United States deserves our thanks for having developed the Internet and making it available to the world. But I think you also all acknowledge the need for more international participation in discussions of Internet-governance issues.''

But on the sidelines, other delegates acknowledged the deal was vague.

''We haven't resolved everything, but the principle is that all governments have an equal role in responsibility,'' said Yoshio Utsumi, secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union, the U.N. agency that organized the summit.

The 25-member EU bloc said the deal would, in the end, give more countries a voice on domain-name policies, including the prickly situation of providing domain suffixes in languages other than English.

EU spokesman Martin Selmayr said the final deal was based on the EU's proposal, particularly the creation of the international forum and a declaration that no country should be involved in decisions affecting another country's country-code suffix, such as ''.cn'' for China.

Though the EU didn't get all it wanted, it got ''a framework for a more international approach,'' Selmayr said.