Radical stance stalls UN summit on poor

A United Nations summit to discuss how to protect the world's poor from the global economic crisis has been postponed after a chaotic political wrangle.

Rev Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, the firebrand Nicaraguan priest who is president of the UN General Assembly, has infuriated member countries by pushing for a radical overhaul of the world economic order, including the creation of nine new international bodies.

Last week he was forced to announce that the meetings, due to take place in New York on Monday, would be postponed for almost a month, as embarrassed heads of state pulled out after negotiations stalled.

"We believe that success will depend on a positive and forward-looking outcome document and the active engagement of the political leadership of the member states at the highest possible level," d'Escoto Brockmann said in a letter to UN ambassadors, delaying the summit.

The Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and its Impact on Development was meant to give the poorest countries a say in the debate about how the global system should be reformed in the wake of the credit crunch.

Nobel prize-winning American economist Joseph Stiglitz chaired a commission which produced a report for the conference in March, calling for a massive increase in overseas aid to allow developing countries to carry out their own banking bailouts, like their richer counterparts.

UN insiders say d'Escoto Brockmann caused chaos by tabling a much more radical draft agreement at the last moment. "It was basically Leninist," said one person familiar with the talks.

At Gordon Brown's G20 London summit in April, the IMF received a massive boost which trebled its resources. Anti-poverty campaigners have since become increasingly concerned that by consolidating the power of the Washington-based lender, the G20 governments have pre-empted efforts to rewrite the rules of the international economic system.

They had hoped the UN conference would allow a wider range of countries to contribute to the debate. Duncan Green, head of research at Oxfam, said with political momentum for a radical response to the crisis fading, there was a risk of the summit producing little but warm words. "The poorest countries are suffering from a crisis which they didn't create. The only guarantee of having their voices heard is if they're at the table; and the only place they're at the table is the UN."

Britain had planned to send Development Minister and Brown ally Douglas Alexander to the summit, but decided to send civil servants instead.

UN insiders are also concerned it has failed to react speedily enough to the crisis, allowing the G8 and G20 to co-ordinate the world's response.

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