Some 3,000 people are expected to take part in the meeting--and even blasé New Yorkers may find themselves gawking at the names on the list.

And just as the Davos meetings of WEF were no less famous for their networking possibilities than for their substance, the "Davos in New York" meeting promises to maintain that glittering tradition.

Along with more than 1,100 chief executive officers of the world's leading corporations--the Forum's core constituency--participants in the meeting will include more than a dozen heads of state, a like number of heads of international institutions and agencies, hundreds of academicians from the world's most prestigious universities and the leaders of some 300 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

Among the heads of state expected to participate are: Prime Minister John Howard of Australia, President Thomas Klestil of Austria, Crown Prince Sheikh Salman bin Haman Al-Khalifa of Bahrain, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien of Canada, President Andrés Pastrana of Colombia, President Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany, King Abdullah II bin Hussein and Prime Minister Ali Abu Ragheb of Jordan, Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad of Malaysia, President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, President Alejandro Toledo of Peru, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of the Philippines, President Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland, Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani of Qatar, Prime Minister Adrian Nastase of Romania, Prime Minister Mikhail M. Kasyanov of the Russian Federation, President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal, Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic of Serbia, President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga of Sri Lanka, and President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa.

The roster of international officials expected to take part in the meeting leads off with United Nations Secretary General Kofi A. Annan and includes the heads of a dozen UN and Bretton Woods agencies: Jacques Diouf of the Food and Agriculture Organization, Juan Somavía of the International Labor Organization, Horst Köhler of the International Monetary Fund, Peter Piot of UNAIDS, Mark Malloch Brown of the UN Development Programme, Klaus Töpfer of the UN Environment Programme, Koichiro Matsuura of Unesco, Thoraya Ahmed Obaid of the UN Population Fund, James Wolfensohn of the World Bank, Gro Harlem Brundtland of the World Health Organization, and Mike Moore and Supachai Panitchpakdi (Moore's designated successor) of the World Trade Organization.

Maurice F. Strong, a Senior Adviser to Annan and former Secretary General of the UN Conference on Environment and Development (the Earth Summit), is one of several notable environmentalists scheduled to take part in the meeting. Others include David Runnalls of the International Institute for Sustainable Development, Yolanda Kakabadse Navarro of the International Conservation Union, Eileen Claussen of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, Jonathan Lash of the World Resources Institute, and Claude Martin of the Worldwide Fund for Nature.

Secretary of State Colin Powell is the highest-ranking US official scheduled to take part. Other American officials on the roster include Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill, Environmental Protection Administrator Christine Todd Whitman, Homeland Security Director Thomas J. Ridge, Former President Bill Clinton and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Also scheduled to take part are 43 leaders and other representatives of the world's leading religions, a much larger representation than at prior WEF meetings. Among their number are at least eight Muslim leaders along with the Chief Rabbi of Israel, Ravi Shankar and Desmond M. Tutu.

"It is clear that the world's religions play a central role in societies around the world," said Klaus Schwab, founder and President of the Forum. 'We believe that religious leaders can make an invaluable contribution to our multi-stakeholder dialogue as we address the major challenges on the global agenda." "When we were planning this meeting," said Donna Redel, a Managing Director of the Forum and head of its Center for Global Industries, "in the aftermath of Sept. 11 and in the midst of an anthrax scare in New York, we could hardly have imagined the level of participation we're looking at today. It's clear that our members feel that this meeting is both necessary and important at this time."

The program for this meeting will also differ from those of the past, according to Frédéric Sicre, another Managing Director and head of the Forum's Center for Regional Strategies. Many sessions that would have been handled as panel discussions, he said, will be workshops to "allow participants to debate key concepts and share valuable insights with peers on leadership and management issues and to explore the business, government and civil-society perspectives on common challenges."

"We created a brand new program for this Annual Meeting," said Schwab, "a program designed to stimulate discussion and provide insights that will help us better cope with the fragility of our times."

"Business and political leaders are now more aware of the vulnerability of our societies, our economies and our companies," says the Annual Meeting's Program Preview. "Security has become--and will remain for the foreseeable future--a major concern Š High on the agenda of the Annual Meeting 2002 is to get stakeholders of the international community--coming from government, business, civil society, academia and the media--to work together more effectively to ensure that the much-publicized notions of a clash of cultures, lifestyles and civilizations does not become a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Accordingly, "achieving security, addressing vulnerabilities" is one of the six "challenges" that the meeting will focus on, and "sharing values and respecting differences" is another. The other challenges are: "restoring sustained growth," "redefining business challenges," "reducing poverty and achieving equity" and "reevaluating leadership and governance."