Divided they stand

The United Nations was founded 60 years ago to reflect the noblest ideals of the democracies that came together to defeat fascism and build a juster world. It has often been said since by cynics that a more accurate name for the organisation would be "Divided States". Sadly, it is only realistic to predict that, barring a diplomatic miracle before the UN's biggest-ever summit opens in New York today, it will once again fail to meet its own expectations.

The 150 or so heads of state and government who will be attending are reviewing progress since their millennium summit five years ago. That was held to learn from the lessons of a first turbulent post-cold war decade that saw catastrophic failure in Somalia, Bosnia and Rwanda and a widening gap between the developed and developing worlds. Since then the 9/11 attacks and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have raised painful questions about the efficacy and relevance of the world body. Last week's report on the Iraq oil-for-food scandal exposed an organisation tainted by corruption, though it spared Kofi Annan, the secretary-general. And the latest human development report highlighted the distance still to be travelled if there is to be any substance to so many pious declarations about eradicating global inequalities.

Any accounting of what happens on the East river this week is bound to focus on how it leaves the millennium development goals - to end hunger, poverty and disease. The United States, represented by the controversial John Bolton, initially demanded that the very phrase be removed from the summit's "outcome" document, and only relented in the face of outrage by many other countries. Yet whatever the final wording, there is no prospect that the world's only superpower will pledge to spend 0.7% of its GDP on development aid, the target agreed by Europeans. That is a depressing step backwards from the Monterrey summit in 2002. Acting on a holistic view of human development needs - from sanitation to education - is vital to post-Gleneagles decisions on further multilateral debt relief and ending farm subsidies in the next WTO talks in December.

Development is the biggest of the "problems without borders", that the UN should be in the forefront of tackling. But there have been huge difficulties in addressing the remainder of its three-part mandate - security and human rights. Mindful of Kosovo and Iraq, countries such as China and Russia (thinking of Tibet and Chechnya) are unhappy with the concept of the "duty to protect" - humanitarian intervention that can override state sovereignty.

Excellent ideas for a post-conflict peace-building commission (one would have been very handy in Iraq had the war been legal) and a human rights body with teeth instead of the discredited Geneva commission, have met opposition from similar quarters. It is hard to square the circle on nuclear proliferation without the big powers meeting their own disarmament obligations. And if dexterous diplomatic drafting has solved the conundrum of an agreed definition of terrorism (the issue is the old one of legitimate resistance to occupation), climate change seems stuck over US rejection of Kyoto.

Regrettably, reform of other key UN procedures and bodies also looks like stalling. Long-standing attempts to end the anomalous structure of the security council, frozen in the lost world of 1945, are to be put off. Mr Annan's call for greater powers to prioritise and manage is being blocked by the general assembly, ignoring the good work of the "high level panel" he convened to focus on "threats, challenges and change". Those threats and challenges look like emerging from this summit largely intact, with broad statements of principle replacing concrete commitments so as to avoid the impression of failure. And with the member states the biggest obstacles, significant change is elusive. As ever, divided states make for a United Nations with a heart of gold but limbs of clay.