Tiniest U.N. Member Not Lost in Crowd

Monday was the day of the power lunch. At the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, President Jiang Zemin of China addressed 600 dignitaries. In Hyde Park, N.Y., President Clinton and Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin dined on loin of venison and some heavy conversation. All across Manhattan, wailing sirens signaled the arrival of another world leader at this lunch or that.

Meanwhile, on East 70th Street, a white Lincoln escorted by a police cruiser without flashing lights pulled quietly to the curb at the Explorers Club, and out stepped Kuniwo Nakamura, president of Palau, the United Nations’ newest (No. 185) and smallest (population 15,000) member. Waiting for him inside, at a luncheon of salmon and banana chips, were a handful of travel writers and one of the 4,000 journalists covering the United Nations’ 50th anniversary.

With more than 180 world leaders in New York for the biggest birthday bash ever, Nakamura and the heads of the small countries are all but lost in the crowd.

That bothers Nakamura not at all. He was just pleased that when he stood next to King Hussein of Jordan for the U.N. group photo, the king knew exactly where and what Palau was--a western Pacific island nation whose economy rests on the 40,000 tourists, mainly Taiwanese, that it attracts yearly. Palau, scene of some of the heaviest fighting in the Pacific in World War II, was a U.S. trust territory prior to independence last October.

“This U.N. session is a wonderful occasion, but I can’t wait to get out of New York,” Nakamura confided later in the day. “I want to go back to my slow-lane haven. The Pacific is so relaxed. I tell my friends, I don’t understand how New Yorkers can survive here. And the taxis, they’re something else the way they drive. I mean, we’re just installing our first traffic lights in Palau, and we’ve only got 6,000 cars in the country.”

At this historic event where pomp is everything and money means little--President Clinton’s four-bedroom suite at the Waldorf Towers goes for $6,000 a night--Nakamura, 52, a University of Hawaii graduate with an economics degree, cuts a refreshing figure. He hands out business cards with his phone and fax numbers on them. Next to his bed, in his 32nd-floor suite at the Grand Hyatt hotel, is an ironing board, an iron and a pair of pants he is getting the wrinkles out of.

“We’re a very conservative country fiscally, and people expect me to watch what I spend,” he said. “This room is about $500 a night, and frankly, I’d just as soon move out of the hotel and get something a lot more modest. What else do you need but a little space and a clean bed? But I really didn’t have a choice. Security wanted me here.”

Nakamura bought an economy ticket for the 28-hour journey from Koror, the capital of Palau, to New York that spans 11 time zones and crosses the international dateline. Fortunately, the airline upgraded him to first class. But the president admitted: “The jet lag is killing me. My mind is off somewhere. . . . “ And he rolled his eyes toward the ceiling.

For Palau’s biggest event since independence, Nakamura brought a delegation of only four with him from Koror. A fifth legislator joined the group after Continental Micronesia Airlines offered him a free ticket.

Palau has no plans to open a U.N. mission in New York--”It would cost too much,” the president noted--and no plans to expand beyond the single embassy it maintains, in Washington. Palau diplomats who came to New York from Washington shared rooms with members of the delegation and slept on roll-away cots.

Like every president here, Nakamura kept a busy schedule. He met with Clinton to thank him for continued U.S. support, shook hands with Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and shared a breakfast table with President Jacques Chirac of France, exchanging pleasantries even though Palau was the first nation to adopt an anti-nuclear constitution.

Nakamura was surprised that although many countries are at war or at odds with one another, the General Assembly was civil and everyone seemed to get along on a personal level.

After pitching the travel writers on the beauty and potential of Palau at the Explorers Club lunch--paid for in large part by an airline and a hotel chain--Nakamura returned to his hotel room to rewrite the speech he will deliver today to the General Assembly. He rejected the first draft for not placing enough emphasis on the need to eliminate nuclear weapons.

“I look around the General Assembly floor,” he said, “and I don’t envy the major leaders I see who have to cope with so many really serious problems. But you know, we all have headaches. Even when you’re small, you have to deal with things that, to you, are big.”