Rich, Poor States Seek Deal for UN Finance Meeting

Rich and poor nations edged closer on Tuesday to a deal on proposals for reforming the global financial system, but diplomats said there must be changes if a U.N. conference this week is to adopt them.

A three-day U.N. General Assembly meeting on the financial crisis and its impact on the developing world, originally scheduled for June 1 to 3, was postponed to Wednesday to Friday when it became clear negotiators had no agreement on draft proposals.

Although the meeting has been billed as a summit, no Western leaders are expected to attend and only 14 presidents and prime ministers will show up. The other 112 countries taking part will send lower-level delegations.

The heads of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank will also be sending deputies, U.N. officials said. Western envoys said that reflected dissatisfaction with the meeting's organizer, leftist U.N. General Assembly President Miguel D'Escoto of Nicaragua.

The top speakers are to be Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Bolivian President Evo Morales, both well-known leftists. While Morales has confirmed he will attend, U.N. diplomats said Chavez might join the long list of absent world leaders. They

did not know why Chavez might not appear and the Venezuelan U.N. mission was not available for comment.

The run-up to the conference has highlighted differences between radicals who want to give the 192-nation General Assembly much more say in tackling the financial crisis and major powers intent on keeping control in their own hands.

With less than 24 hours to go before the conference opens at U.N. headquarters, diplomats told Reuters they were closing in on an agreement on a set of proposals they hope the conference will adopt.

D'Escoto told reporters that most of the work on the draft proposals was done, although he said they would still have to be approved by the 126 nations attending the meeting.

"I am satisfied with the way it's going," said D'Escoto, a Roman Catholic priest who was Nicaragua's foreign minister in the 1980s in the left-wing Sandinista government of Daniel Ortega, who returned to the presidency in 2007.

He also rejected criticism of the summit and the way it had been organized, saying, "What is important is what will be agreed