UNITED NATIONS – On the eve of a summit billed as the largest-ever gathering of heads of state, General Assembly negotiators failed to reach an agreement on an agenda for the meeting, intended to discuss various issues including U.N. reform. Secretary-General Annan and the assembly president, Ambassador Jean Ping of Gabon, had envisioned the summit as a second “San Francisco moment,” similar in spirit to the world body’s founding 60 years ago.

When President Bush and the heads of 148 other states and governments arrive at Turtle Bay tomorrow, negotiators will have little to show in terms of hope and unity, the themes at San Francisco. Even if a document outlining an agenda for the conference is produced by this morning, it will be weak, diplomats said. Heads of state are expected to sign the document, if it is produced at all, before the end of the summit Friday morning.

After weeks of negotiations led by Mr. Ping, even compromises – some made by American diplomats – collapsed last night. Instead of releasing a document addressing issues including human rights, peace-building, economic development, terrorism, prevention of genocide, and reform of U.N. management, the assembly was forced to extend the mandate of its 59th session, which was scheduled to end at midnight, to allow all-night discussions to continue until this morning at 10 a.m.

“We haven’t given up anything that we’ve deemed important,” the American ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, told The New York Sun when asked about compromises already made by Washington.

America has allowed the use of language it has opposed in the past – such as a call for rich countries to contribute 0.7% of their GNP to foreign aid – but American diplomats insisted that such targets not be mandatory.

Applying diplomatic language to major concerns, such as abolishing the notorious Human Rights Commission and calling for it to be replaced by an ill-defined human rights council, was not enough for the Americans. “We agreed to” the compromise on the human rights council, a spokesman for the American U.N. mission, Richard Grenell, said, “but we are not happy with it.”

A group of leading diplomats appointed by Mr. Ping was racing against the clock earlier yesterday to smooth over such differences. The group, representing 15 countries, including America and the other permanent members of the Security Council, attempted to produce a document that would be agreed to by a larger “core group” of 32 nations, and eventually by all 191 member states.

At 6 p.m., however, with the mandate of the General Assembly’s 59th session about to expire, representatives of such countries as Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Sudan, as well as the Palestinian Arabs, took the stage, demanding to see what agreements were already achieved and expressing opposition to some of the agreements already made by the group of 15 nations.

“It was ugly in there,” a Western diplomat, asked not to be identified said.

The agenda for the summit was set earlier this year by Mr. Annan in a booklet called “In Larger Freedom,” which proposed major changes at the United Nations and was meant as a blueprint for agreements by member states gathered for the 60th anniversary session.

One diplomat from a small country, who asked not to named during the ongoing negotiations, said that the deepest contention is between those who want to strengthen the powerful Security Council in its current form, which allows the leading countries to maintain most of the power, and those who prefer that more crucial decisions be made at the General Assembly, where smaller nations can muster a majority.

“You have America on the right, the group of 77 on the left, and the European Union trying to negotiate in between,” Ambassador Gunter Pleuger of Germany said, referring to a group of 77 developing countries.

“Given the level of ambition in ‘In Larger Freedom’ – we are clearly not there but we have made steady progress,” one of the principal negotiators in the group of 15, Ambassador Allan Rock of Canada, said.

Some points of contention were removed when diplomats from that group made a pact to postpone decisions on any point of disagreement to a future date.

For example, although terrorism was denounced in the document, Mr. Annan’s goal of producing a definition of terrorism, was deferred to a future “high-level conference under the auspices of the U.N.” The latest draft did not mention the word “civilians” as targets of terrorism.

Some Arab diplomats said that they would oppose even that compromise, as it did not give an exemption for terrorists who fight “colonial domination and foreign occupation” – presumably a reference to suicide bombings in the streets of Israel.

United Nations officials were philosophical as the difficulties of achieving reform at their organization became clear. Reform is a “process,” they stressed, rather than a one-time event.

Undersecretary General for Public Information Shashi Tharoor, who is of Indian descent, quoted Ghandi: “Be the change that you want to see,” he said, explaining that reform should be internal first.

But one of the most intractable points of contention last night was how to address reform within the U.N. management itself.