Platitudes round Kofi's table can't hide summit time blues

The UN's millennium gathering was packed with promises but short on lasting benefits. Ian Williams reports from New York

ONE way to make sense of the diplomatic orgy at the United Nations last week is to consider it a ritual act of faith. In that context it was more successful than the religious leaders' summit which preceded it. The politicians were actually all there to agree on a declaration - even if it was one that had been put through the diplomatic blanding machine to avoid annoying the sensitivities of any of the participants. The religious leaders' summit excluded the Dalai Lama so as not to offend Beijing, and they ended up differing about what they wanted anyway.

The official results of the events - the Millennium General Assembly and the Security Council Summit in New York - consisted of declarations that contained few surprises since they mostly confirmed a consensus achieved over weeks of niggling negotiations. Peacekeeping should work better; the UN should have the resources to do its job; we should stop the scourge of war and there should be less poverty.

At secretary-general Kofi Annan's urging, the Assembly committed the massed governments to halve the number of people living on less than a dollar a day by 2015. One need not be a cynic to wonder whether it would be any more effective than a pledge to give up adultery by the same date. Divorce lawyers would doubtless still be secure in their jobs. The major point was a call for an injection of funds and forces into UN peacekeepers, based on a report prepared by former Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi which was pragmatic in its avoidance of any hint of standing UN forces that the US Congress could object to.

Many of the other points were blunted to meet the consensus requirement. The US diluted the final statement so countries were only asked to "consider" signing up for the international criminal court rather than being urged to do so. Newly nuclear India removed a call on states to sign the non-proliferation treaty, while the other nuclear states, including the USA, nixed Annan's suggestion for a conference on nuclear dangers. Last year, in the aftermath of Kosovo, Annan called for serious discussion of humanitarian intervention. It is not in the current declaration.

Meanwhile, as the UN is discovering the joys of working with major global corporations, many of the developing world leaders were less convinced. Speaker after speaker cautioned about the downside of globalisation. However, their views were no more binding than the statements and declarations that were adopted.

The UN secretariat will implement what it can and what the major powers want, no more and no less. For example, even as everyone applauded and adopted the peacekeeping report, with its emphasis on robust forces with firm mandates, the security council was still trying to get its Congo operation off the ground - a peacekeeping operation which most people privately accept replicates every mistake of Bosnia and Somalia, and then adds some of its own.

For a week Manhattan was limo-locked, the skies filled with helicopters, the East River patrolled by police boats and divers. There were round-the-clock demonstrations as almost every activist's most wanted list came to town at the same time.

However, beneath the platitudes lay several subtexts. The real target of this event was 200 miles down the east coast at Capitol Hill. That is where the US senators and congressmen who rule the world have been bleeding the organisation to anaemia for decades - and where, despite his brave declarations of support on Wednesday, Bill Clinton has never in two terms seriously battled for the UN.

Despite a speech calling for "better machinery to ensure UN peacekeepers can be rapidly deployed, with the right training and equipment [and] the ability to project credible force" and concluding that "all nations, including my own, must meet our obligations to the UN", the USA currently owes the UN $1.7 billion (#1.1bn).

The missing cash makes it almost impossible to plan peacekeeping operations - or for that matter fix leaks in the roof of the UN building. In fact, in 1994, rather than face going to Congress to ask for a few millions for peacekeepers in Rwanda, Clinton sent Madeleine Albright to stop any reinforcements or re-equipment for the beleaguered Canadian general Romeo Dallaire - as 800,000 people died.

On the other hand, there is no other venue where Clinton could send messages like he did by shaking hands with Fidel Castro on Wednesday or staying behind in the General Assembly to listen to Iranian President Khatami's thoughtful speech - which reciprocated by not denouncing the Great Satan once.

Most speakers took the opportunity to give their hobby horses a run round the ring. Russia's Vladimir Putin proposed a conference on the demilitarisation of space - and offered to host it. Blair led many others in calling for a focus on the problems of Africa. But although these gatherings are called debates, most of the major politicians do not actually listen to each other's speeches, and the emptiness of the hall for the minor players is quite embarrassing. For many countries the main attraction is the UN TV feed of their - mercifully brief - speeches for domestic consumption. One can presume that few, if any, UN officials apart from the note-takers took on board the repeated pleas against globalisation from the developing countries.

While all this was going on, offstage was a sequential diplomatic orgy of bilateral meetings. Hardly noticed was the small dinner at the Waldorf Astoria for the Third Way, hosted by Bill Clinton. It gathered Blair, South African President Thabo Mbeki, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and others to discuss the joint New Labour/New Democrat project. Missing was French socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, since Paris was represented by conservative President Chirac - although Jospin is notoriously sceptical of the concept anyway.

So what lasting benefits will there be from the summit? The most practical aspect was in fact an afterthought. With all these people here, one enterprising bureaucrat thought, why not get them to sign on to some of the 500 or so multinational treaties and conventions deposited at the UN? As an inducement a special signing area was set up where potentates could ratify round the clock any permutation of the 25 most popular treaties - with continuous TV coverage. Around 80 countries will be signing up for one or more conventions, the most popular signings beings against the use of child soldiers and child pornography.

More intangible benefits are no less important, however. Certainly the message that the UN is an important place - which was carried by the US media on an unprecedented scale - hit the target in Washington, but it remains to be seen whether it has the desired effect. On another level is the message that the secretary-general is an immensely popular figure across the world - as proved by the number of presidents and premiers who tried to get a one-on-one with him.

His term finishes in one year, and while he declines to state his intention, it is to be hoped that the security council will ask him to accept another term. The millennium event has made that even more likely.

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