UPDATE - Computer Glitch Keeps Women From U.N. Talks

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Glitch Keeps Women From U.N. Talks

Story Filed: Monday, June 05, 2000 8:26 PM EDT

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Hundreds of people from around the world who had hoped to participate in the U.N. women's conference were instead left waiting in line for hours after a computer meltdown slowed conference registration to a trickle.

Lines wrapped around the accreditation building as U.N. officials scrambled to make handwritten lists of some of the 10,000 expected delegates, grassroots representatives and reporters who waited until Monday morning to pick up their credentials.

U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said the registration office had been open all weekend to accommodate the crowds. But, he said, a crush of people came Monday at the start of the conference and the appearance of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. At the peak of the process, several computers broke down.

At one point, security officials said, only two computers were working for the line of delegates that stretched a half a city block long and several people deep.

Isabel Zanutegh, who came from Argentina with a group pressing for recognition of the value of women's work at home, said she expected more from the United Nations.

``It seems terrible that after so much effort and so much work it's so bureaucratic,'' she said while she waited in line. She was near the front, but only after a four-hour wait on the breezy June day.

She said she had missed the one panel that she had hoped to catch -- the one where Mrs. Clinton spoke about promoting small loans for women to escape poverty. ``We missed the whole day,'' she said.

By late afternoon, the lines were thinning out and U.N. security officials began directing delegates to the media accreditation trailers where crowds were beginning to get more manageable.

The weeklong conference is reviewing progress toward achieving equality of the sexes since a landmark meeting of women in 1995 in Beijing.

http://library.northernlight.com/ED20000605620000026.html?cb=200&dx=2006&sc=0#doc

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-- (Dee360Degree@aol.com), June 05, 2000


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