*EPF304 08/30/00
U.N. Millennium Summit Expected to Set Goals for 21st Century
(President Clinton to open September 6-8 summit) (1260)
By Judy Aita
Washington File United Nations Correspondent

United Nations -- Seeing the turn of the century as a unique and symbolically compelling moment to articulate and affirm a vision for the world organization, the United Nations will hold a Millennium Summit September 6-8 to give world leaders an opportunity to discuss some of the major challenges of the coming decades and energize efforts to tackle them.

Among the issues on the agenda will be how to pull billions of people out of abject poverty, strengthen U.N. peace operations, deal more effectively with the world's environmental problems, reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, and reform the United Nations itself.

Deputy Secretary General Louise Frechette said the summit is being held at the suggestion of the U.N. secretary general, not for the purpose of celebration or commemoration, but because "we are going through a truly dramatic change in world relations, and there is a feeling that it is very important that direction be given at the highest level" to the United Nations so that it can be adapted to the needs of the new era.

"The Summit is very much a working summit and it should not be assumed that it will be like the 50th anniversary (celebrations)," Frechette explained at a news conference in late August. "There is no gala event. There is no commemoration." The only "nod to tradition" will be a group photo of all the leaders attending the Summit, she said.

The U.N. expects more than 150 heads of state or government to attend, and the deputy secretary general said that the Summit is "likely to be the largest gathering of heads of state and governments in history." (The 50th anniversary held in September 1995 was attended by 91 heads of state, 8 vice presidents, 1 crown prince, and 37 prime ministers.)

The three-day Summit will consist of a General Assembly plenary that will include statements by the leaders that will be limited to five minutes, four round table discussions, a two-hour Security Council Summit on September 7, and other sessions that will focus on girls' education and on information technology and how to bridge the "digital divide" between rich and poor countries. The four roundtable discussions will be closed to the public and press.

Frechette termed the round table format "a first" that is designed "to allow for more informal and more open discussion among leaders."

"It is important because we will get out of these informal discussions, as well as from the statements in the plenary, a really good sense of what is on each leader's mind, what is important to them," she said.

President Clinton will be the first speaker on September 6. Other speakers will be the co-chairs of the Summit: Tarja Halonen, president of Finland, and Sam Nujoma, president of Namibia.

Secretary General Kofi Annan's Millennium Report entitled "We the Peoples: The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century," released in April, will be the basis for the round table discussions.

In the report, Annan asked world leaders to take action in several areas: to halve the proportion of people (currently 22 percent) whose income is less than one dollar a day and halve the proportion of people (currently 20 percent) who do not have access to safe drinking water by 2015; ensure that by 2015 all children complete a full course of primary education; set an explicit goal of reducing HIV infection rates in persons 15 to 24 years of age by 25 percent in the most affected countries by the year 2005 and by 25 percent globally by 2010; and increase research on health problems such as malaria, tuberculosis, pneumonia and diarrhea.

"There is much to be grateful for," Annan said. "Most people today can expect to live longer than their parents....They are better nourished, enjoy better health, are better educated, and on the whole face more favorable economic prospects."

"There are also many things to deplore and to correct. The century just ended was disfigured, time and again, by ruthless conflict. Grinding poverty and striking inequality persist within and among countries even amidst unprecedented wealth," he said. "Diseases, old and new, threaten to undo painstaking progress. Nature's life-sustaining services, on which our species depends for its survival, are being seriously disrupted and degraded by our own everyday activities."

"The world's people look to their leaders, when they gather at the Millennium Summit, to identify and act on the major challenges ahead," the secretary general said.

The challenge is clear, he said: "if we are to capture the promises of globalization while managing its adverse effects, we must learn to govern better and we must learn how better to govern together."

He urged developed countries to grant free access to their markets for goods produced in poor countries, provide more generous development assistance, expand debt relief for heavily indebted poor countries and be prepared to cancel all official debts of those poor countries in return for those countries' making demonstrable commitments to poverty reduction.

The secretary general also challenged the leaders to find ways to prevent armed conflicts, to enforce international and human rights law, to target economic sanctions so the innocent do not suffer for their leaders' actions, create greater transparency in arms transfers, and address the dilemma of U.N. intervention in the face of gross abuses of human rights or mass murder.

The Summit "is designed to deal with these problems...to generate a strong political commitment to reach these goals by timeframes that are realistic but ambitious," Frechette said.

"None of these problems can be solved by a magic wand in the year 2000 on the 6th of September, but it does make a difference if leaders from all countries of the world get together and say these are priorities and we are determined to do whatever is necessary to reach these goals," she said.

"Many of the targets were developed by the member states themselves through various conferences, but, in many cases, they have been endorsed by ministers of health or education," the deputy secretary general pointed out. "What the Summit will do is elevate the level of commitment to make it a commitment by the leaders themselves. This makes a big difference."

The Security Council meeting on September 7 will discuss the maintenance of peace and security, particularly in Africa. The council is also expected to pay particular attention to a report of a special panel under the chairmanship of former Algerian Foreign Minister Lakhdar Brahimi on U.N. peacekeeping operations released in late August.

Other activities that will take place on the sidelines of the Summit are treaty ratifications and bilateral meetings between the heads of state. Frechette reported that the United Nations has been informed that between 65 and 70 countries will be signing one or more legal instruments while they are in New York for the Summit. Among the treaties are those dealing with the International Criminal Court, landmines, rights of women and children, and climate change.

The bilateral meetings -- opportunities for world leaders to meet privately while attending a larger meeting -- have traditionally been an important part of major U.N. sessions. During the U.N. 50th anniversary session in 1995 the U.N. provided areas for 703 bilateral meetings in addition to those held at other venues around New York. "And we're pretty sure that number will be matched if not exceeded" this September, Frechette said.

(The Washington File is distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web Site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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