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Morning News

U.N. Millennium Summit: Perils of Poverty; Clinton Meetings with Barak and Arafat Yield No Progress

Aired September 7, 2000 - 10:01 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: The United Nations has long tried to make in-roads against poverty, but now the world organization believes the road to success may actually be the information superhighway.

As our CNN senior U.N. correspondent Richard Roth now explains, some say a high-tech approach can help solve one of the world's most enduring issues.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RICHARD ROTH, CNN SR. U.N. CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Never mind globalization, the United Nations says 1.2 billion people around the world still do not get enough to eat or drink.

MARK HILDEBRAND, WORLD BANK CITIES ALLIANCE: Many cities in Africa have 60, 70, 80 percent of their population living without clean water, without sanitation.

ROTH: The U.N.'s traditional weapons against poverty are promoting debt relief and political stability. But Secretary-General Kofi Annan wants to add computers to that arsenal.

KOFI ANNAN, U.N. SECRETARY-GENERAL: We can bring all kinds of knowledge within reach of poor people and enable poor countries to leap frog some of the long and painful stages of development that others have had to go through.

ROTH: The U.N. is enlisting tech whiz volunteers called UNITES (ph) to teach people in developing nations how to benefit from the digital age.

AMIR DOSSAL, U.N. FUND FOR INTL. PARTNERSHIPS: A farmer, for example, incidentally, can develop a Web site, can have access to prices in the world market, for example. So he would know how to price his goods. He would know how to market them.

ROTH: The U.N. is also building a global health network of 10,000 Web sites to help poor hospitals track disease and gain access to cutting edge medical information. But some see a digital solutions to poverty as farfetched.

JOHN CAVANAGH, INSTITUTE FOR POLICY STUDIES: The Internet is not going to solve the problems of poverty in any way, shape or form. Most of the world's poor people, and there are now well over a billion of them, their basic struggle each day is to get enough to eat, to control the basically sources that they need to grow food, to catch fish.

ROTH: Annan is pushing other U.N. initiatives like Cities Without Slums, in which the U.N. and the World Bank help pay for local efforts to eliminate slums. The goal: cutting poverty in half over 15 years is within reach, he says, and the alternative is unacceptable.

ANNAN: Unless we redouble and concert our efforts, poverty and inequality will get worse still. Since world population will grow by a further 2 billion in the next quarter century with almost all the increase in the poorest countries.

ROTH: Countries that are still waiting for the new economy to show up.

Richard Roth, CNN, United Nations.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: And this gathering of world leaders also affords a new opportunity outside the spotlight. President Clinton has held back-to-back meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Yesterday's sessions yielded no progress, but White House officials say that peace efforts will continue.

For more on that, we turn to CNN Jerusalem bureau chief Mike Hanna, who we have on this side of the pond to attend the summit.

Mike, good morning.

MIKE HANNA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning, Daryn. Amidst the gridlock of New York the, negotiations are ongoing. There have been late-night meetings, all sorts of discussions going on.

In the course of Wednesday, President Clinton met separately with both Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. But after that meeting, no indication that any real breakthrough had been achieved, but the White House says that there has at least been no breakdown as such. And that still is no sign that Mr. Clinton managed to extract any of the concessions needed from either leader that would be necessary to break the deadlock in negotiations.

And, late last night, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright held a meeting with Ehud Barak. We are told she was reporting back to Mr. Barak on the substance of Mr. Clinton's earlier meeting with Mr. Arafat.

Once again, no indication of exactly what was discussed at that meeting. But an Israeli source said afterwards that efforts will continue to examine whether the basis is there for the resumption of negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

This is what it's all about. They are trying to seek whether there is the common ground necessary to justify the holding of another Camp David type summit, in which yet another attempt can be made to reach a Middle East peace -- Daryn.

KAGAN: And Mike, does there appear to be any room for compromise in any of that?

HANNA: Well, this is a question of what the leaders are going to decide. The negotiators have said that all these negotiations have happened, everybody is well aware of what the positions are of each leader. However, some negotiators say that it is the time for the leaders perhaps to come to a decision, and then they can go ahead with further negotiations.

The public positions, they remain far apart on all the core issues, these are issues such as the return of refugees to Palestinian territories, as the presence of Jewish settlers in Palestinian areas, and above all the issue of the sovereignty of the city of Jerusalem.

The Israelis insist it will remain their capital. The Palestinians say East Jerusalem will be the capital of an independent Palestinian state. These are the core issues, They've been the core issues for a long period of time. No sign yet of any coming together on that.

But the one bottom line is, perhaps, according to many observers, is that now the leaders have got to decide on principle at this point, rather than detail, if they can come to some kind of an agreement on broad overarching principles, then it is possible for the negotiators to go ahead with further negotiations, perhaps another Camp David type summit may be justifies, Daryn.

KAGAN: Mike Hanna, at the United Nations. Thank you, Mike.

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