The largest summit meeting of world leaders in history ended at the United Nations last week, and never have so many achieved so little. Some 150 heads of state walked away without achieving much for the fight against genocide, poverty, terrorism or public corruption. The United States deserves a big share of the blame, yet rich and poor states alike seized the opening to scuttle Secretary-General Kofi Annan's ambitious, overdue agenda.
Halving extreme poverty, halting human rights abuses and controlling the spread of nuclear weapons would have been a fitting renewal of the United Nations' founding principles on its 60th anniversary. Expanding membership on the Security Council, the United Nations' only tool of any weight, would have recognized the evolving strength of the developing states and moved a range of explosive issues, from immigration to ethnic cleansing, more to the political fore. Annan also needed member-state cooperation to rout patronage and corruption from within the huge U.N. bureaucracy. If kickbacks and gross mismanagement in the U.N.-run Iraqi oil program cannot arouse reform, what can?
While many blame the barn-burning U.S. ambassador, John Bolton, for the summit's collapse, other states, notably African and Arab, went in without the stomach to clean up the United Nations or their corrupt regimes. For all the administration's unilateralism, U.N. states still look to Washington for leadership. As Bush's poll numbers sag, so will reform.
Not all went sour, despite Japan threatening to cut its U.N. subsidy and Iran's new president taking the opportunity to flaunt his alarming nuclear ambitions. Annan was right that the summit was "a good start" toward addressing poverty and terrorism and energizing the United Nations for the 21st century. The Bush administration seemed to acknowledge the need to increase foreign aid, Arab and Israeli leaders got together, the issue of expanding the Security Council is alive and a global - though weak - anticorruption pact goes into effect in 90 days.
This session, though, should have been more than a "start"; presidents and prime ministers expect something tangible in return for making the trip. Annan will need to find a breakthrough to keep these leaders engaged on a broader agenda. With Iraq nearing a new crossroads, an impasse over nuclear testing and uncertainty across the Mideast and Latin America, the only one with more at stake than the secretary-general is the United States.
