But delegates to a UN conference on hunger could agree only to try to reduce the higher number by half. Not to set their sights too high, this is a target for 2015, mind you.

Still, by today's paltry standards, this accord will be hailed as a big success. By week's end when the conferees have finished hitting the Roman boutiques and scooped up the stylish wares that Italian designers are famous for and are heading home, 800 million people will still be wondering where their next meal is coming from.

This was billed as a food summit, meaning that most UN member states were expected to send along someone at the level of president or prime minister to do the honors. Much has been made, in what little media coverage there's been in the US, of the fact that, among the developed countries, only Italy and Spain met the summit requirement. Government leaders on hand were mainly from client countries badly in need of help for their famished masses -- many them suffering the effects of those same leaders' inept governance or personal greed and corruption.

Robert Mugabe, who is suspected of having just stolen the election in Zimbabwe and whose policy of seizing the land of white farmers has decreased rather than enhanced that agriculturally rich country's capacity to feed its citizens, was present. (Hold a conference nowadays and attach a summit tag and you may be sure Ole Bob will be in there making out like tin god and showing disdain for his critics, including the Commonwealth organization that suspended his government's membership.

Kofi Annan has many opportunities for lamentations in 2002. In Rome, he lamented the slow progress worldwide in fighting starvation and called for yet another hunger summit to increase the effort to eliminate food shortages, including ways to promote agricultural and rural development. Does the UN need a second summit for this? What are all those agronomists and plant biologists out there doing with their time?

Hunger, the Secretary General said, is a violation of human dignity. One of the worst violations. "We need an anti-hunger program that could become a common framework around which global and national capacities to fight hunger can be mobilized," he continued.

Anticipating, no doubt (accurately), that the conference would wind up with more promises, he said, "There is no point in making further promises today. This summit must give renewed hope to those 800 million people by agreeing on concrete action."

Africa is the recognized global basket case, and Annan warned that several countries in the southern part of that continent "are facing a risk of outright famine over the coming months."

Jacques Diouf, the head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization which arranged the conference, reflected on how little progress had been made since the first "food summit" six years agio. "Death continues to stalk," he said. "Promises have not been kept. Worse, actions have not reflected words. Regrettably, the political will and financial resources have not matched the mark of human solidarity."

Mary Robinson, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the right to eat was fundamental, yet it was recognized insufficiently, both internationally and nationally.

Pope John Paul, in a message delivered by Holy See Secretary of State Angelo Sodano, voiced concern that developing countries were receiving less aid than hitherto. He urged guarantees that everybody got enough to eat.

UN conferences must always have a Declaration. In this one, the council of the FAO is called upon to elaborate "a set of voluntary guidelines to support member states' efforts to achieve the progressive realization of the right to adequate food." Within 2 years!

They needed an expensive international gabfest for this?