Robinson could be joined by another leading woman at UN

When the President, Mrs Robinson, installs herself in her new home in Geneva she may well find shortly that her new neighbour is another of the political women heavyweights of European politics. For, as Norway's lacklustre political parties square up in their campaign for this country's general election, their former leader, the redoubtable Ms Gro Harlem Bruntland, is working from her parliamentary office in the Storting on her own election campaign - for the director generalship of the World Health Organisation (WHO). On Tuesday, she took time out to meet a visiting group of EU journalists.

The retirement last year of "Gro", as she is known here simply, marked the end of a political era in Norwegian politics which she dominated for over 10 years both as prime minister and in opposition. She also made her mark on the world stage, initially with the landmark UN report on the global environment which bears her name and elaborated the concept of sustainable development.

A doctor by profession, Ms Bruntland also has a master's degree in public health from Harvard, and although Norwegian diplomats express quiet confidence that she will get the WHO job, she acknowledges candidly that Mrs Robinson's election as Human Rights Commissioner will have done her chances no good.

Some of the supporters of the six other candidates have already pointed, she says, to the need to share the key UN top posts between different regions. Should two white, liberal women from western Europe hold such senior positions, they ask, no matter how individually outstanding?

Against her supporters' advice, Ms Bruntland backed the Robinson nomination, "warmly".

In the UN context, Ms Bruntland is, as she is at home, very much a moderniser - her emphasis, at a time characterised by donor fatigue, is on efficiency and better co-ordination of resources rather than strident calls for more. And she strongly endorses the Annan proposals to bring the leaderships of all the UN agencies together in one forum. What is needed in the UN, she argues, "is the spirit of a government".

In her three-page application for the job, Ms Bruntland makes it clear that the WHO should "focus on its special competence" - code for avoiding embroiling itself in the political rows that are more appropriate to other UN forums.

But few imagine she would be anything but blunt on the issues that the WHO does face, whether AIDS or the need to remind states of commitments made at the UN Social Summit, two years ago, championed by her, to devote at least 20 per cent of development aid to social projects such as health and education. Gro has always led from the front.

Her retirement from the leadership of the Labour Party has left a considerable vacuum in local politics ahead of the Norwegian general election on the 15th. All the parties, with the exception of Karl I. Hagen's far-right Progress Party, lack leaders of charisma.

But, like all Labour supporters, she blames the rise of Hagen not on Labour's weakness but that of the Conservative opposition and its bland leadership.

She utterly rejects the notion that Labour is old-fashioned or needs to reform itself, insisting that Norwegian Labour embraced the mixed economy 15 years before British Labour.

But the truth is that the Norwegian model of socialism, very much her legacy, is far closer to that of Dick Spring than Tony Blair. Instead of distancing themselves from the trade unions, Labour in Norway saw its closeness to the unions as a strength and pioneered social dialogue in a way that closely mirrors Irish national agreements.

The challenge, Ms Bruntland argues, is to treat the non-oil strands of the economy as the priority and plan for the 30-year term. When the oil and gas runs out, Norwegian labour and industry must be competitive - Labour and its allies in the leadership of the main union confederation, LO, has attempted to copperfasten this by persuading workers to accept severe wage restraint at a time when the state's coffers are bulging with oil revenues, carefully salted away for leaner times. It is a compact possible only, Norwegian Labour argues, in a society as egalitarian as this.

The result is a low-inflation economy with significant growth, largely harmonious industrial relations, and a political climate of consensus that makes an election a choice between managements rather than ideologies.

Ms Bruntland still deeply regrets the electorate's decision in 1994 to vote No to the EU but accepts that any attempt to reverse it soon would be foolhardy. The loss to Norway is "largely political" rather than economic, a loss of influence over decisions about markets for Norway's goods. "Basically, it's a question of whether Norway should partake in the political process in the region where it is."

That loss is also in the country's relationship with its Nordic neighbours who did join. "We are now competing for their time and attention," she says.