Middle East dispatch  .iq test  As Iraq tries to rebuild itself,
a struggle over the country's internet identity is on the cards,
reports Brian Whitaker A new battle for control of Iraq is
looming - this time on the world wide web. It centres on the
two-letter country code - ".fr" for France, ".ru" for Russia,
etc - used for website and email addresses. More than 240
countries have these codes, and there is even one for Palestine
(.ps), but the code assigned to Iraq (.iq) is in a weird sort of
limbo.  Some of these codes are controlled by governments but in
theory anyone approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned
Names and Numbers (ICANN) can become a country code manager and
make money from websites that use the two magic letters.  That
is what happened in 1997 when Bayan Elashi, a Muslim of
Palestinian origin, looked at the list of country codes and
found that Iraq was still available. He applied for it, and got
it.  It is scarcely surprising that ICANN approved Mr Elashi's
application, since he was