VOULIAGMENI, Greece -- Asia will drive a massive online expansion by the end of the decade, helped by computer sharing and emerging cellular phone technology, the U.N.'s top Internet official predicted.

Nitin Desai is heading the first Internet Governance Forum -- a global summit that opens at this resort near Athens on Monday.

"The big expansion in the Internet in the next five years is going to take place in developing countries," Mr. Desai told The Associated Press last week in an interview.

"A lot of it in countries which are not English speaking ... where people don't even know the Latin alphabet, for instance, China."

Some 1,200 people are expected to attend the Athens forum, which will be opened by Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis.

Academics, policy makers, technology experts and user groups will join separate discussion sessions on Internet openness, security, diversity and public access.

Delegates are expected to discuss proposals to ease current U.S. control of the Internet and improve international cooperation to fight Internet crimes like banking fraud and distributing child pornography.

Desai, a special adviser to the U.N. Secretary General, said better cooperation would prevent overly restrictive Web policing.

"The vast majority of the billion Internet users are decent citizens ... it's important that we don't lose site of that," he said.

"Criminals travel on the road. Therefore let's have a rule which says no one should get on the road without first checking at the police station. Would you do that? Of course you wouldn't ... The important thing is not to overreact."

He described the Athens forum, which is planned to become an annual event, as a global "townhall meeting" that would bring together professionals who rarely talk to each other, at a time when the profile of the average Internet user is changing.

"This is a medium which in five years' time will have users who are not your classical Internet users. These are not research professionals in developed countries ... It's going to be a lay user. It's going to be a user in China, in Arabic speaking countries, in India," he said.

"Look at the way the Internet technology is going to interface with the mobile technology. Once you get that, the cost of access won't be more than the cost of using a mobile phone ... India is talking in terms of half a billion people having mobile phones, in a matter of barely five years."

The Athens meeting ends Thursday.