Chavez, Morales to attend U.N. finance crisis summit

By Louis Charbonneau
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - South American left-wing firebrands Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales are among the few heads of state attending next week's U.N. meeting on the global financial crisis, a U.N. spokesman said on Friday.
In addition to Venezuelan President Chavez and Bolivian President Morales, the leaders of Ecuador and Serbia, vice presidents of Iran and Zimbabwe and a Russian deputy prime minister will speak at the conference, U.N. General Assembly spokesman Enrique Yeves told reporters.
Most industrialized developed countries are sending much lower-level delegations to the meeting, which Western diplomats told Reuters was a reflection of their dissatisfaction with the way the president of the General Assembly, a leftist former foreign minister of Nicaragua, has organized the meeting.
The official purpose of the June 24-26 conference -- billed as a "summit" -- is to discuss the impact the financial crisis has had on the developing world and to agree on proposals to reform the global financial system.
Western diplomats have complained that assembly president Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann, a Roman Catholic priest who was in Nicaragua's Sandinista government throughout the 1980s, has tried to use the upcoming conference to put capitalism on trial, an allegation his spokesman has flatly rejected.
They also said they expected participants like Chavez and Morales would use the conference -- which U.N. officials and diplomats say will have no decision-making powers -- as an opportunity to rail against free markets.
Attempts to revise a set of draft proposals prepared by D'Escoto's office have been difficult and it remains unclear if delegations will be able to reach a consensus on concrete financial reform proposals, diplomats involved in the negotiations told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
G77 CRITICISM
Despite their criticism of the conference -- various senior Western envoys referred to it as a "joke," "tragedy" and a "waste of time" -- diplomats from the Group of Eight club of wealthy nations say they have not dismissed it altogether.
"We still want the U.N. to have something to say about the financial crisis," one Western diplomat said. "It's not too late for it to play a role as a key forum for ensuring that aid and climate are issues that are not forgotten about."
One senior diplomat from the Group of 77 bloc of developing nations, however, accused the Western powers of obstructing negotiations on reform proposals.
The G77 diplomat said it was possible there would be no proposals agreed at the conference. Some Western powers, he said, wanted to issue a bland political declaration so that participants could at least say they agreed on something.
But many G77 countries opposed the idea, he added.
"The G77 will not accept consensus at any cost," he said.
Among the reform proposals being discussed are the creation of a world council to oversee the global financial system, or the replacement of the U.S. dollar with the International Monetary Fund's Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) as the world's reserve currency, an idea that both Russia and China have endorsed.
In addition to Chavez and Morales, 19 other presidents, vice presidents and prime ministers and 31 ministers are expected to attend, Yeves said. Two-thirds of the 192 U.N. member states will participate in the conference.

Source: Reuters