Global Policy Forum

By Rodolfo A. Windhausen

The U.N. has unanimously chosen the presidents of Namibia and Finland to be the joint chairmen of the upcoming Millennium Summit amid growing controversy over the meeting's discussion of the organization's role in the 21st century.

Namibia's President Sam Nujoma and President Tarja Halonen of Finland will jointly preside over the summit, which will gather some 188 heads of state and government at the U.N. headquarters in New York between Sept. 6 and 8, according to a General Assembly resolution passed late Friday and released Monday. The encounter will precede the regular 55th meeting of the General Assembly and, at the initiative of Secretary General Kofi Annan, is designed to set up a blueprint for the "new" U.N. in the present century.

The summit has already caused some controversy in diplomatic circles. Australia had announced last month that it would not send its head of government but only a lower level official, possibly a minister, to the meeting. A spokesman for the Australian government had told reporters that his country did not support the idea of the gigantic meeting -- the largest of its kind in U.N.'s history -- because it would only "repeat some of the issues" that are going to be addressed during the regular General Assembly session.

A spokesman for the Australian Mission to the U.N. told United Press International Monday that "we are not aware of that and, in fact, we have been very supportive of the Millennium Summit." The official said, however, that "it has not been confirmed" who was going to represent his government at the meeting. Apparently, the Australian objections were endorsed by some neighboring South Pacific countries, which have announced they would only send minor delegations to the summit. Cuba also said President Fidel Castro had "no intention" to attend.

Before the resolution was adopted, several delegates had raised concerns Friday about the verbatim records of the round tables as opposed to summaries of the deliberations. Other representatives raised questions over the participation of religious and spiritual leaders in the summit meetings. Speaking on those issues were, among others, the delegates of Pakistan, Republic of Korea, China, France (on behalf of the European Union and its associated states), Syria, Bahamas, Egypt, Nigeria, Chile, Sudan, Cuba, Oman, Mexico, Bahamas, Namibia, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and India.

The summit's provisional agenda, which will be updated in the next two weeks, has scheduled some 60 speakers per day, many of them presidents, prime ministers and kings. Libya, Syria, Cuba, Myanmar (Burma) and Liberia are among the states sending send only ministers to the summit, according to that official U.N. list.

U.N. sources said delegates have been asked to limit their speeches to a maximum of five minutes. In addition to the speeches at the General Assembly hall, there will be four sessions of "interactive round tables" on the role of the U.N., each one of them to be presided over by a head of state or government. The group of African states will chair one of the four round tables, while the Asian, the Eastern European and the Latin American and Caribbean states will chair the other three. Member states that do not belong to any regional group will participate in different round tables to be determined in consultation with the general assembly president.

The sessions, the U.N. announced, will be closed to the public and the press, but will be broadcast over closed-circuit U.N. television. The Millennium Summit will require the deployment of special security forces in and around the U.N. headquarters in New York "in a number larger than during the 1995 celebrations of the world organization's 50th anniversary," sources said.