No Global Peaks for India Summit : Diplomacy: Only three leaders arrive for G-15 conference of developing countries. Some see the demise of the Third World as a pressure group.

The motorcycle outriders wore smart gray puttees for the occasion. The elevator operators donned gloves. Flags had been hoisted and spanking new white Mercedes limousines imported.

Everything and everybody, it seemed, was ready for the summit of the G-15, the developing countries’ answer to the Group of Seven--everything, that is, except the guests.

It was a fiasco that cuts to the quick of the diplomatic quandaries of India and much of the rest of the Third World these days. New Delhi had been banking on playing host this week to the fourth annual gathering of leaders from some of the most important nations of Asia, Latin America and Africa.

The high-rise Maurya Sheraton Hotel & Towers, one of New Delhi’s poshest addresses, overhauled its VIP suites. Women in saris toiled in the warm sun, meticulously repainting nearby curbs. Doormen put on their splendid gold and tangerine turbans and livery worthy of Rajput warriors.

India, home to 300 million poor, decided it could splurge and spend 500 million rupees, or about $16.4 million, on the prestigious event. A former maharajah’s palace in the midst of a lake at Udaipur, backdrop for many of the action scenes in the James Bond film “Octopussy,” got a face lift to serve as the leaders’ private retreat.

But by the time the summit was to have convened, just two had come: President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed.

“I don’t want to pretend and insult someone’s intelligence by saying this is a success,” said Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesman Shiv Shanka Mukherjee. He insisted in an interview, however, that a pre-summit meeting attended by foreign ministers from 12 of the countries had done plenty of useful work.

The G-15 summit, which had been scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday, has been postponed until a new time can be found during the last week of March or first week of April, Mukherjee said.

Nonsense, scoffed the Telegraph newspaper of Calcutta. The “Group of Zero’s” inability to convene proves that “the Third World, never a particularly effective international pressure group, has given up the ghost,” it proclaimed.

“The problem is that New Delhi continues to act as if the corpse can still walk,” the newspaper jeered.

In the Indian Parliament, Chaturanan Mishra of the ruling Congress Party demanded this week that the government explain why the conference had not taken place and said there is a growing feeling that Indian influence internationally is on the wane.

As evidence that he was right, Mishra said two ministers of state made trips abroad to firm up summit attendance but failed miserably.

“There was an unfortunate set of coincidences that kept the leaders away,” Mukherjee said. “Some had elections, others had domestic concerns.” As more and more opted out, he said, defections “snowballed.”

India was a driving force behind the Nonaligned Movement, which in theory sought to pilot a course between the Soviet Bloc and the West--but that in practice was often a rubber stamp for Kremlin actions. India was also a founder of the Group of 15 (G-15 for short). That organization of developing countries was established in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in 1989.

The group was supposed to promote dialogue among nations of the Third World and allow them to take a unified stance in dealings with the developed world, especially on trade and development assistance.

But the end of the East-West divide and the rise of the North American Free Trade Agreement and other regional trading blocs eliminated much of the rationale for the G-15 by the time its fourth summit meeting rolled around.

Mexico, for instance, is a member of NAFTA and G-15. Unlike in the 1960s, the developing countries and former colonies are badly divided, with East Asian countries drawing closer to the West and much of Africa forsaking the socialism it embraced at independence.

Faced with these realities, India is engaged in a difficult search for its place in the post-Cold War world. It bet heavily on the wrong horse in the U.S.-Soviet race for global supremacy and has seen the idea of nonalignment become little more than a tired formula.

Asked if he thought the G-15 postponement means that member countries have lost interest, Mahathir replied, “I don’t think so.” He and Mugabe held an informal “mini-summit” with Indian Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao on Tuesday and stressed the G-15’s importance as a link between developing countries and as a bridge between them and the industrialized West and Japan. A third leader, President Suharto of Indonesia, who is also the current chairman of the Nonaligned Movement, arrived here Wednesday.

Although striving mightily to accentuate the positive, even Mukherjee left open the possibility that the full-dress G-15 meeting might never take place. If that is the case, he said, India will probably sell the 15 deluxe Mercedeses it imported so that each president and premier could be chauffeured around in one.

The G-15 countries include Algeria, Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, Jamaica, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Peru, Senegal, Venezuela and Zimbabwe. The status of Yugoslavia, the 15th, is in limbo as a result of the war there and U.N. sanctions. Chile was to formally become the 16th member at the New Delhi summit.