Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, March 13, 1995                   TAG: 9503130102
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: THOMAS GINSBERG ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: COPENHAGEN, DENMARK                                LENGTH: Medium

SUMMIT WAS RIPE FOR GRIPES

If that was the goal, the weekend meeting of 120 leaders at the World Summit for Social Development was a roaring success.

Beyond that, the $28 million conference at best only launched a long debate on how to fix some of the world's evils: poverty, hunger, persecution, greed.

Committing themselves to a pact on fighting poverty, world leaders wrapped up a summit Sunday agreeing that misery can lead to violent social upheaval, but differing on how to cure it.

The weeklong U.N. gathering, which brought together 190 countries and some 120 heads of state, was an ambitious attempt to pull together governments and aid groups to set a global policy.

``The cry of millions of infants worldwide whose lives are threatened by hunger should be enough to consolidate our resolve,'' said Malta's prime minister, Edward Fenech-Adami.

In speeches leading up to the formal adoption of the declaration, poor countries accused richer ones of shirking their duties. Many Third World leaders also agreed, however, that reforms were needed in their own back yards to boost production and fight corruption.

The 10-point declaration, while non-binding, urges richer nations to spend 0.7 percent of their gross national product on foreign aid and to cancel the debt of poor countries. It says donor countries should earmark 20 percent of their aid specifically for basic social programs, while the recipient should spend 20 percent of its national budget on such programs.

The document urges improving health care, sanitation and food production, as well as literacy - especially among women as a means to lower the birthrate. Facing calls for reform itself, the United Nations may have the most at stake. It will try now to implement the summit's 80-page declaration of goals for ending poverty, unemployment and social inequalities.

The summit was held as the world redefines itself after the Cold War. But the timing hardly could have been worse.

The United States, Germany, Britain and other wealthy nations - most facing domestic political rebellions against welfare - insisted that years of abundant foreign aid are over.

``During more than 30 years of development cooperation, we have all learned that the key to success is help towards self-help,'' said German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

Many of the 130 developing nations represented at the summit agreed.

But they parted ways with the rich over whether the answer is to shovel the aid burden onto private groups and individual nations without addressing the rules of the game built up during the Cold War.

``International development efforts became predicated on the degree of support that developing countries gave to either of the two superpowers ... The developing countries and their peoples became mere marionettes,'' said Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad.

The East-West conflict defined almost all aid decisions after World War II, from the Marshall Plan to the Peace Corps.

Today, delegates from the Third World - the term itself a Cold War relic - say the rich are moralizing again and ignoring the realities.