The president of the UN General Assembly postponed a financial summit aimed at giving the developing world a bigger voice in tackling the global economic crisis in hopes of attracting more world leaders. To date, he hasn’t succeeded.
Just 14 heads of state and government — out of the total of 192 UN member states — will attend the summit from Wednesday to Friday, most prominently Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Bolivian President Evo Morales, General Assembly spokesman Enrique Yeves said on Friday.
Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, a leftist Nicaraguan priest and former foreign minister, also delayed the summit from early this month to give negotiators more time to reach an agreement on the final document to be issued at the end of the meeting.
The first draft was considered too left-leaning by a significant number of UN countries and it had to be rewritten.
Yeves said negotiators were still struggling to reach agreement and would likely meet all weekend.
When d’Escoto announced the summit in April, he said it would ensure that all nations — not just the 20 major economic powers — “have an opportunity to participate equally and fully in the common search for solutions that meet the concerns and needs of all countries, large and small.”
He invited the 192 UN member states to attend at the highest level.
According to the latest figures, 126 of the 192 UN member states will participate in the summit — 14 heads of state and government, four vice-presidents, 31 ministers, three deputy prime ministers, 28 vice-ministers and many ambassadors. Ten of the 14 world leaders coming to New York are from Latin America and the Caribbean, with just two Europeans, one African and one Asian.
Asked whether d’Escoto was disappointed at the low turnout of world leaders, Yeves said: “The president of the General Assembly believes that regardless of who’s coming ... the most important thing is the substance of the agreements.”
“It’s up to states to determine the level” of participation, he said. “All of them knew it was the highest-level possible.”
Yeves said three main elements were being negotiated: an emergency global stimulus plan that will help not only the rich countries but also the weakest countries; ways to sustain a global stimulus plan including possible changes to the current international financial architecture; and the way forward, including a follow-up mechanism and a future UN role.
“Those basic principles are agreed upon by basically most of the member states,” Yeves said.
But “the more we go into the details, the more disagreement there is,” he said.
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