Washington D.C.: In a policy reversal, the United States plans to retain its control over the top-level domain and addressing system (DNS) of the Internet.

Earlier the US had said that it was it was willing to give up its control over the internet's master indexes and root directory. Although the internet's 13 root servers are in private hands, the US commerce department holds veto power over the more than 250 top-level domains, such as .com and .net.

Speaking at a wireless conference in Washington Thursday, assistant commerce secretary Michael Gallagher said his agency plans to retain that veto authority despite earlier pledges to divest itself of involvement in Internet governance, eventually ceding control to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

Later Thursday, the US government's new principles were posted on Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) Web site.

"The United States is committed to taking no action that would have the potential to adversely impact the effective and efficient operation of the DNS," the statement reads. "(The United States) will therefore maintain its historic role in authorising changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file."

The policy statement acknowledges that other governments have a legitimate public policy interest in the management of their country's top-level domains.

"As such, the United States is committed to working with the international community to address these concerns, bearing in mind the fundamental need to ensure stability and security of the internet's DNS," NTIA states.

The NTIA also said it was committed to continue working with ICANN, the private organization formed in 1998 to oversee the technical global operations of the internet.