THE United Nations’ annual gathering this week is bound to be a shambles. Expectations could hardly be lower — and rightly so.

But it is wrong to blame that on Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General, or John Bolton, the US’s pugnacious new ambassador. In the past two years, Mr Annan has identified some of the UN’s worst faults and set out a plan to fix them, even if he has got nowhere. Mr Bolton has done the same in two months, and forced some improvements. Only on one or two points can he be said to have picked a fight with nothing to gain.

The real problem is that the UN summit is trying to do too much. And the reason it is doing that is that the old bargain between developing countries and the developed world — particularly the US — is breaking down.

To rail at the US to give something it was never going to give is the politics of wishful thinking. It may play well to the gallery but it will ensure the failure of this week’s summit and in the end, of the UN itself.

Normally, the UN’s annual jamboree in New York is an exhausting but dull affair. The frisson comes from having so many world leaders and ministers in one place: from some refusing to talk to others and others inadvertently shaking hands, as Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, did with Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe last year.

The substance of the three days usually comes from deals on the side — a few countries tidying up unfinished business. This week, the tensest confrontation will be between the European Union and Iran, defiant over its nuclear programme.

But the real drama is centre stage. Mr Annan, to his credit, gave this summit the task of reforming the UN and its powerful Security Council.

His best retort to last week’s scathing report on the corruption of the UN’s Oil-for-Food programme in Iraq was that his high-level panel on threats, challenges and change had already identified many of the problems with the UN.

As well as reform, this week’s summit had taken on a second, mammoth task: getting a new pledge of support for the millennium development goals, drawn up in 2000 to help the poorest countries.

The broad deal thrashed out in the past few months gave developing countries a new commitment to aid. In return, developed countries would get UN reform, plus tougher language on terrorism and proliferation.

Then Mr Bolton stepped in, the villain of the piece. Famously sceptical of the UN’s entire reason for existence, he turned up and demanded that governments rip up much of the text of the bargain thrashed out in the past year.

It is wrong to blame him for problems that predate his appointment, and go to the heart of the rows about the UN’s purpose. The thrust of his pitch is reasonable. It is that even within the UN, governments still have primacy.

There is no point in UN bureaucrats trying to construct a process without taking account of what the US thinks, and relying on moral pressure to force its support.

That sets up the US to be demonised as the world’s great bully. But it is reasonable to insist that it is not going to be tied to packages of obligations crafted by the UN. It is reasonable to refuse to sign up to targets of spending on development aid, arguing that other countries will not be able to meet their pledges.

Reasonable — up to a point. But the US is itself guilty of wishful thinking in conceding nothing to the UN’s development agenda, and still wanting help to fight terrorism.

There is an split between the wishes of developing countries, and the developed world. The US is not to blame for pointing that out — but it will be if it scuppers any chance of a deal by refusing to talk the language of negotiation.

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