DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Envoys from nearly 90 nations on Friday signed the first new United Nations telecommunications treaty since the Internet age, but the U.S. and other Western nations refused to join, saying the treaty endorses greater government control over the Internet.

The head of the U.N. telecoms group disputed the American assertions, defending the nonbinding accord as necessary to help expand online services to poorer nations and add more voices to shape the direction of modern communications technology.

Hamadoun Toure’s remarks highlighted the wide gaps and hard-fought positions during the past 10 days of global talks in Dubai.

The negotiations pitted the West’s desire to preserve the unregulated nature of the Internet against developing countries yearning for better Web access and strong-arm states such as Iran and China that heavily restrict access to the Web.

The final break late Thursday was not over specific regulations in the U.N. group’s first telecoms review since before the Internet was a global force. Instead, it came down to an ideological split over the nature of the Internet and who is responsible for its growth and governance.

More than 20 countries joined the U.S. on Friday in refusing to sign the protocols by the U.N.’s International Telecommunications Union, claiming it opens the door to greater government controls of the Internet and could be used by authoritarian states to justify further censorship and crackdowns.

Rival countries — including Iran, China and African states — insist the governments should have a greater sway over Internet affairs and seek to break a perceived Western grip on information technology. They also favor greater international help to take reliable online links to the world’s least developed regions.

The telecommunications agency — which dates to the age of the telegraph in the mid-19th century — has no technical powers to change how the Internet operates or force countries to follow its nonbinding accords, which also dealt with issues such as mobile-phone roaming rates and international emergency numbers.

But the U.S. and its backers worry that the new treaty could alter the tone of debates on the Internet. Instead of viewing it as a free-form network, they claim, it could increasingly be seen as a commodity that needs clear lines of oversight.

“A free and open Internet with limited restrictions has been critical to its development into one of the greatest tools for empowering people to connect and share information globally,” said U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, DCalif., who represents part of Silicon Valley, in a statement from Washington.

“But there are countries and groups who wish to exert greater control over the Internet in order to restrict or censor it for political or cultural reasons,” she added. “We need to stand firm against those kinds of threats if we want the Internet to continue as a vibrant engine for innovation, human rights, cultural and economic growth.”

In a testament to the contentious atmosphere at the Dubai negotiations, the pages of reservations and comments by various countries were far longer than the treaty itself.

In the end, it was supported by 89 countries in the 193-member U.N. telecoms union. Fiftyfive did not sign, including the U.S.-led bloc of more than 20 nations, and others needing home-country approval. The remainder did not have highranking envoys in Dubai.

Toure, the group’s secretarygeneral, said he was “very much surprised” by the U.S.-led snub after days of difficult negotiations that dropped or softened wording that troubled the West.

Yet it fell short of Americanled demands that all references to the Internet — even indirect or couched in general language — be omitted.

Even an issue such as unsolicited e-mail “spam” led to division. Efforts to try to address blanket electronic message barrages was seen by American envoys and others as something governments could use as possible U.N. cover for increased surveillance on e-mail traffic.

“Fundamental divides were exposed,” said Lynn St. Amour, chief executive officer and president of the Internet Society, an industry group.

Toure framed it as a clash of “two societies” of the Internet age: citizens of wealthy countries able to access the Net and 4.5 billion others in poor nations on the other side of the so-called digital divide.

“We are defending here the right to communicate as a basic human right. That’s something very important in the [International Telecommunications Union]. We so remind our members constantly of that obligation,” he told reporters.

Business, Pages 27 on 12/15/2012