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Gossip

The Sovereign Right to Smoke Oneself to Death

Although the conference halls and corridors are plastered with "no smoking" signs, there are no law officers to enforce the rule. The violations have been going on openly -- even as the European Parliament voted Tuesday to adopt stringent new legislation on the marketing of cigarettes. The law, however, does not come into force until September. The UN Secretariat in New York is no exception: delegates have been flouting the no smoking law with impunity. The Secretariat has remained helpless because member states have asserted their sovereign right to smoke. Never mind the health hazards. After strong protests, the Secretariat has decided to set up a smoker's lounge in the basement. Perhaps the European Parliament should follow suit.

Seeking the Turner Viewpoint

Ted Turner, a onetime media mogul and sometime philanthropist, is one of the invitees to the LDC conference. Asked whether LDCs were expecting a fat cheque, Conference spokesperson Habib Ouane said: "No, we have invited him to provide a private sector perspective to the poverty alleviation debate."

Drumming It In

In the African tradition, delegates have taken to drumming - drumming in the message, three time, in fact ... First we had Tanzanian ambassador to the UN Daudi Mwakawago paraphrasing Harvard University economist Jeffrey Sachs, "We need money, money, money." Then UNDP administrator Mark Malloch Brown pitched in. "Our role here is capacity build, capacity build, capacity build."

And yesterday UNAIDS executive director, Peter Piot, went even further with his holy trinity. "It is now clear that that an order of magnitude increase is needed in the global AIDS effort - ten times as much money, ten times the effort in national responses, ten times the commitment of the international community."

Mysteries and Scandals

''It was not a press conference, but a mystification,'' said an African journalist, when the UNIDO Director General Carlos Magariños hurriedly declared a news conference closed. Only some 10 minutes after it had begun.

The fact that reporters were bubbling with curiosity to hear about the outcome of discussions at the 3-hour long Interactive Thematic Session on Energy, appeared to leave him unimpressed. In fact, the questions addressed to Mali's Economy and Finance Minister Bacari Kone, who flanked him on the right, were shoved for reply to a UNIDO official. ''Why doesn't the African minister reply?'' protested an African journalist. However, before he could take to the floor, the press conference had been declared closed and the main actors were nowhere to be seen.