"It's great to be in the Waldorf and I am a spoiled-rotten rock star and I love the fantastic hospitality and I'll drink champagne and I'll eat the cake, but there is a sense that this is just a talking shop; it's just a little close to Marie Antoinette." Thus did U2 singer Bono begin his pitch for real action to change the world to a packed audience of the rich and powerful at the World Economic Forum in New York.
And judging from the wave of applause that rolled across the ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, the global executives and world politicians were in a mood this year to focus on issues usually aired on the street, rather than on business as in the past.
For the 31 years the forum was held in Davos, Switzerland, corporate leaders were put centre stage. The 2002 conference marks a new level of awareness by the organisers that they need to address the concerns of those who see them as an elite capitalist club, and to sit up and take notice of a changed world after September 11th.
The location - the plushest hotel in Manhattan - plus the celebrity worship and the exclusive parties for the invitation-only guests may do little, however, to convince the representatives of the huddled masses protesting outside that anything has changed.
The 2002 Forum is certainly the most "hip" in Davos history. The eclectic nature of those invited to pronounce big thoughts on the world was revealed in the two-inch thick "Who's Who" of 2,700 guests given to everyone registered. The entries ranged from South African president Mr Thabo Mbeki, NATO Secretary General Lord Robinson and Microsoft's Mr Bill Gates, to supermodel Ms Naomi Campbell, the BBC's Mr John Simpson and Sinn Féin's Mr Gerry Adams.
Celebrities, billionaires and executives queued together for hours for the Davos Companion, a Compaq pocket computer equipped for e-mail and session updates given free to every delegate. But the most sought-after item was a ticket for a concert given by Elton John, who received a fee of $1 million (€1.2 million) from Lehman Brothers to entertain 200 guests at the Four Seasons restaurant.
Those delegates who couldn't get in had the option of a party co-hosted by billionaire investor Mr George Soros, or a private concert in the Waldorf where the performers included Lauryn Hill, Anoushka and Bono.
The theme-setting first plenary session on Friday evening was entitled "For Hope" and given over to a panel made up of Bono, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, holocaust survivor Prof Elie Wiesel and the leaders of three developing countries.
The forum had to get people "to believe that the developed world was really interested in the developing world", said Bono. Many people in the US and Europe were unaware, he told them, that their governments "didn't let some of the poorer countries trade with them", and that some developing countries were put in the equivalent of debtors' prisons because of old Cold War debts.
"There is an emergency in the world," he said, turning to an issue which he has frequently raised. "There are 25 million Africans who are HIV, and they are about to leave behind 40 million AIDS orphans at the end of this decade. This is an every-day holocaust." He challenged the celebrity audience on their attitudes to what was happening in Africa. "We live with the idea of equality but we don't live out the idea of equality because it's annoying," he said.
The idea of equality dated back to "Jewish sheep-herders with shit on their shoes walking in front of the Great Pharaoh and the Great Pharaoh saying, 'You are equal?' and the farmers going, 'well that's what it says here'."
Today black people and women were accepted as equal, but the notion persisted that Africans were not equal. "And if we're honest, we really don't think they are. We really don't believe that they care about their children as much as we do, or else we wouldn't be letting this malaise turn into the greatest single threat to humanity ever. But we are, and history will record this moment . . . about how this entire continent burst into flames while we stood around with watering cans.
"This is a defining moment in history and I would say it is a defining moment in the World Economic Forum because these are the minds that can bring about change.
You are the people that can really turn things around."
On the same panel, Queen Rania of Jordan asked the business leaders to look at the root causes of violence, warning: "There is a danger of a bipolar world, a subliminal segregation of us and them, and that is a very dangerous view."
