Millennium Summit at U.N. to Draw 150 Leaders

In what may be the largest gathering of presidents, premiers and potentates in history, more than 150 international leaders will converge on the United Nations this week with a formidable goal: solving the world’s direst problems.

For U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the Millennium Summit is a symbolic chance to reinvent the troubled world body. By the end of the week, he wants each leader to pledge support for a bevy of targets, including halving extreme poverty by 2015, reversing the spread of AIDS by 2010 and bolstering peacekeeping operations.

But with such sweeping problems, can this three-day rush of speeches and meetings actually help the U.N. overcome its image of all talk and no action?

“It is easy to be cynical about these meetings and say, ‘Oh, they produce nothing,’ ” said Deputy Secretary-General Louise Frechette. “But many such gatherings have made a real difference in focusing political energy and raising political will.”

Although most of the goals for the summit, which starts Wednesday, came out of past U.N. conferences, it is the first time they will be part of a comprehensive agreement to be signed at the end of the week.

Over the session’s three days, each leader will have five minutes to address the assembly. While the speeches drone on, other leaders will attend four round-table talks designed to improve education, prevent war and ensure that globalization leaves no one behind. Almost 70 countries plan to sign or ratify other existing U.N. treaties on issues such as human rights, discrimination against women and eradication of land mines.

Much of the real action will be on the sidelines. President Clinton will seize one more chance to oversee Middle East peace, shuttling between Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Long-stalled talks over Cyprus could resume, and a deteriorating peace pact in Congo may get a boost. Hundreds of other meetings will take place in hotel rooms, countries’ missions and dozens of “love booths” set up around the U.N. building for quickie negotiations.

“This is so if an Arab wanted to meet an Israeli, for example, they wouldn’t have to go to each other’s mission,” U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said. About 250 such meetings have been booked for the first day alone.

Goodwill and good intentions abound. But ironically, at the moment the U.N. is trying to push its plan of action for the next century, its members are deadlocked over whether to expand the body’s political powers or curtail them.

“There is a real struggle for the heart and soul of the organization,” said Edward C. Luck, an expert on the U.N. based at New York University School of Law. “Those who are trying to slow down the momentum of internationalism are making their mark.”

At the heart of the dispute is the “Annan Doctrine,” the secretary-general’s revolutionary vision that has caused division since he enunciated it at last year’s General Assembly: When a country is overwhelmed by disaster, war--even civil or ethnic conflict--the international community should be compelled to intervene, Annan says. Borders should no longer be boundaries. Sovereignty should no longer be a shield for governments that abuse their own people.

But China and others have countered with formal proposals to ensure that a country’s domestic business remains its own. For Beijing, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s intervention in Yugoslavia last year set an unnerving precedent for outside interference in China’s relations with Taiwan, which it regards as a renegade province, and Tibet.

In addition, Russia worries about the United Nations tangling with its treatment of the separatist republic of Chechnya, and India feels the same about disputed Kashmir. And even Australia said last week that it will limit cooperation with U.N. monitors who have been investigating racial discrimination against aborigines.

Even when countries invite the U.N. inside their borders to maintain peace, it doesn’t always go well. A series of the blue-helmeted soldiers’ failures--notably in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rwanda--has worked against the argument for an expanded U.N. role.

In an upcoming mini-summit, Annan will push the Security Council to ensure that peacekeepers’ abilities can keep pace with expectations. A recent report Annan commissioned outlines how to make peacekeeping missions clearer and better funded and see that they are properly equipped.

Along with dealing with age-old problems, the Millennium Summit will try to bring solutions to new challenges of the 21st century. To help bridge the growing digital divide, the U.N. has created a high-tech version of the Peace Corps. The “Net Corps” will send volunteers to developing countries to train people how to set up Internet networks and use computers to help with health, education, the environment and small enterprise. A separate U.N. initiative called “First on the Ground” will provide satellite and cellular phones for disaster areas.

A handful of leaders could use the help of a videoconferencing system--not all of the leaders of the world body’s 188 member nations will attend the summit. The usual list of rogues is staying home: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein will not appear, nor will the leaders of North Korea, Yugoslavia or Libya. At the last minute, Cuban President Fidel Castro announced that he will come, but as a leader known for his seven-hour addresses, he might feel constrained by the five-minute limit on speeches.

And for those who might want to spoil the party, security will be tighter than it has ever been in New York. The city’s Police Department is responsible for the safety of the leaders until they get to the international territory of the U.N., and it has seen its share of attacks and assassination attempts.

One year, an anti-Castro contingent tried to fire a rocket at the U.N. building from a small boat in the East River. The missile landed in the river with a harmless splash. More seriously, police and the FBI foiled a plot by Muslim extremists to blow up the U.N. with a car bomb in 1993, just days before the attack was to take place.

No one will get near the U.N. without a special pass or a siren and black limousine this week. Closed-off streets mean a week of gridlock for cantankerous New Yorkers. But the U.N. has started a citywide ad campaign to remind people why they should tolerate traffic-stopping motorcades with grace.

Singer Harry Belafonte, who is a U.N. goodwill ambassador, narrates a somber television spot explaining the goals of the summit with the tagline, “History Is Made Here.” Bus shelters, telephone booths and nearly half of the city’s subway cars will carry posters with the summit’s themes in giant letters.

New Yorkers, who endure a U.N.-related traffic snarl every year when the General Assembly opens, are learning to grin and bear it.

“The traffic will be terrible, almost unbearable,” said cabdriver Sofian Chebib, originally from Syria. “But it may be that I’m waiting so my own president can go by. Maybe he will go help make peace. That’s worth waiting for.”