UN: Five years on from the Millennium Summit in New York, leaders from more than 170 countries will gather again in Manhattan this week to discuss reform of the United Nations and review progress on reducing poverty and disease in the world.
But the outlook for agreement on a final document which goes beyond bland generalities remains decidedly mixed. Intensive negotiations were continuing at the weekend on proposals to put before the summit, which opens on Wednesday and lasts for three days.
A core group of 32 ambassadors, representing different sections or groups within the UN General Assembly of 191 member-states, has been chosen to hammer out the final agreement.
A shadow was cast over their deliberations by a report issued last Wednesday on the controversial Iraq oil-for-food programme. The independent investigation, led by former US Federal Reserve Board chairman Paul Volcker, detailed widespread corruption and fraud in the administration of the programme, which operated under the auspices of the UN.
Although he was personally cleared of corruption, Secretary-General Kofi Annan's stewardship of the world body was sharply criticised. This could not have come at a worse time for Annan, who had hoped to push through the most thoroughgoing overhaul of the UN since its foundation in San Francisco 60 years ago. Now he faces a growing clamour for his resignation as the world's top civil servant.
The reform programme also suffered a setback when, at the eleventh hour, the newly-appointed US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, submitted several hundred proposed changes to the draft negotiating document.
The prospect of a diplomatic failure at the UN, on a par with its security and humanitarian failures in Srebrenica and Rwanda in the mid-1990s, cannot be ruled out. Discussions and negotiations over the summer were dominated by the campaign for expansion of the Security Council, led by the Group of Four (G4) countries - Brazil, Germany, Japan and India - but this highly-divisive issue has now been shelved until December at the earliest.
Preparations for the summit have been under way for more than a year. Each head of state or government will be given five minutes to speak. Negotiations will continue behind the scenes with a view to producing an agreed text for ratification by the close of the summit on Friday.
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, who is due to speak on Wednesday at 11pm Irish time, is expected to clarify the Government's position on reaching the UN target of allocating 0.7 per cent of Gross National Product in Overseas Development Assistance. As a member of the European Union, Ireland is committed to reaching the UN target by 2015, but the Taoiseach is expected to make a pledge that the target will be reached within a shorter period of time.
At the Millennium Summit he promised that the UN target would be reached by 2007, but this timetable has since been abandoned.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern will also attend the summit and is due to address the General Assembly next week. He was appointed last April by the secretary-general to be one of five special envoys from different regions of the world tasked with promoting UN reform.
Since his appointment, the Minister has meet representatives of 46 different governments, mainly from the European continent, as well as senior EU officials dealing with foreign policy matters. He has attended two sets of consultations in New York with Mr Annan and the other four special envoys. Mr Ahern is the only serving foreign minister among the five.
A total of 175 world leaders have accepted invitations to attend the summit.
In addition to the Taoiseach, the attendance will include President Bush, Tony Blair and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is expected to be present. Cuban President Fidel Castro is also expected, but French President Jacques Chirac will be absent because of illness.
The late intervention by the new US ambassador, John Bolton, is seen as having undermined the strategy of the EU and others to moderate the opposition of developing countries to reform by offering them significant increases in development aid.
Developing countries are generally reluctant to allow the international community to intervene in their internal affairs, particularly in the areas of governance and human rights. This has created difficulties over proposals for a binding "responsibility to protect", whereby the UN could authorise military intervention to protect citizens in one of its member-states from genocide.
Likewise, the establishment of a Human Rights Council to replace the much-criticised Human Rights Commission has met with opposition from some of the developing countries.
Diplomatic sources said at the weekend that, in the event of a failure to reach consensus, the final document might be a very short text listing a number of principles agreed by the world leaders.
Meanwhile, the British government staged a major diplomatic effort at the weekend to save the summit, with foreign secretary Jack Straw calling on his US counterpart, Condoleezza Rice, to "rein in" Mr Bolton.
What's at stake: the main proposals
1) A renewed commitment to meet the Millennium Development Goals to halve poverty by 2015 and ensure there is universal access to primary education;
2) To set up a peace-building commission to assist areas emerging from conflict;
3) The creation of a human rights council;
4) A legal responsibility to protect citizens from genocide even if it means infringing sovereignty in extreme cases;
5) To curtail the arms trade;
6) To agree a definition of terrorism;
7) To overhaul UN bureaucracy.