Iraq is making its first claim for an internationally recognized presence on the Internet.
Iraq's media commission and the U.S.-led administration in Iraq want to set up Web addresses using the domain code ".IQ" as the final tag. That would mean addresses for Web pages would be distinctively identified on the Internet with Iraq's own country code.
The Iraqi chairman of the National Communications & Media Commission, Siyamend Othman, said the .IQ domain name would allow Iraqis to stake a "virtual flag" in the worldwide Internet community. It is "an important tangible and symbolic milestone for this nation, as well as the freedom and hopes of the Iraqi people," he wrote in a letter dated May 20 to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
Although Internet cafes are popping up throughout Baghdad, few people own computers, and even fewer have regular access to the Internet. A recent survey cited by the U.S.-led administration in Iraq found that about 6% of Iraqis say they have access to the Internet but fewer than 2% use it regularly. About 12% of the population reports having a computer.
Iraqi officials say the rebuilding of Iraq has been hampered by poor national communications.
Before the war, an Internet community had begun to emerge under the regime's State Company for Internet Services, founded in 2001.
The State Company is now the main national Internet service provider.
The U.S.-run administration in Iraq says it has begun to create electronic connections between various government bureaus and to make the Internet more accessible to the private sector.
In an April 16 e-mail to the Internet authority, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, said if the request is granted it "will signal to potential investors that Iraq is rebuilding for a high-technology future." He said Iraq's Internet domain will be managed locally.
ICANN, based in Marina del Rey, Calif., is an internationally organized, non-profit corporation that is responsible for allocating the unique codes that make up Internet addresses and managing other basic maintenance of the Internet.
More than 240 countries, both small and large, have domain names. Some of those countries are Bahrain in the Persian Gulf, Russia and the United Kingdom.
The application process could take several months for Iraq because the country and the government remain unstable. Iraq officials say they modeled their application on one submitted by Afghanistan. The ICANN general counsel handling the Iraq application did not return a message. A spokesman said the organization does not comment on applications
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