Diarrhea's dehydrating effect is the culprit. One of Unicef's innovative, successful programs is the distribution of rehydration kits -- a mixture of salt and sugar that when given early enough can be a life saver.

So the agency thought it was on to something when for a fund-raising campaign it included a demonstration package of rehydration powder with solicitation letters mailed to addresses in France. Unfortunately, the mailing coincided with the anthrax scare in the US. Not surprising, therefore, that what was initially a good idea turned out a total bust in the execution.

Carol Bellamy, the head of Unicef, told the story when she was asked this week whether Sept. 11 and the diversion of funds for charitable causes disproportionately to those related to the disaster negatively impacted her agency, which has long been a favorite for many donors. (The agency has won high marks for holding expenses down, so that most of the donated cash goes to those in need of aid.)

Help for Afghanistan has been a principal competitor, she acknowledged, and was likely to remain so. She was one of the first high UN executives to go there to see for herself that country's plight after a generation of conflict and the untender ministrations of the Taliban. Because many governments have focused their aid contributions on Afghanistan, Unicef, which receives about one-third of its income from voluntary sources, had suffered somewhat, she said.

"We had a dip, but it has begun to level off," she reported in a UNTV interview.

"Afghanistan was discovered after Sept. 11, but it was a humanitarian emergency long before that," she noted. "It didn't just start then."

But the "good news," she said, is what the interim administration of Hamid Kharzai was doing against huge odds to get the country back on its feet, with international assistance, including from Unicef, one of whose aid programs was to supply 7,000 tons of educational books and materials for children now able to go to school -- in the case of thousands of girls, for the first time; the Taliban banned female education, under its weird interpretation of Koranic law.

Although optimistic about Afghanistan's future, Bellamy said recovery was going to take a long time. (Kofi Annan has spoken of maybe 10 years.)

The recent special session of the UN General Assembly on children's issues, the so-called Summit for Children that was scheduled for last September but postponed until this May, after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, gave member states a second chance to fulfill the promises made at the first such summit, held in 1990, some of which were honored while too many died on the altar of good intentions.

For the first time in the UN, children participated, both in a special forum and as members of governmental delegations, including that of the US. People thought it was a cute gimmick, Bellamy said, but in reality it was a great success, opening up a fresh dialogue on several pressing issues.

President George H. W. Bush attended the first children's summit, in 1990, but his son opted out and would not have come even if there had been no Sept. 11 tragedy. Bellamy observed dryly that it would have taken the President only an hour on the Washington-New York shuttle to have turned up -- not that presidents generally fly the shuttle. The event suffered a loss of top-level participants from Europe. In at least three cases -- France, the Netherlands and Ireland -- she blamed this on their election campaigns.

Even so, 67 presidents, prime ministers or other high officials, not to mention a few kings or queens, did show.

While the plight of children in poor, developing countries attracts attention, they suffer also in the US and Western Europe, the Unicef chief said. "Even in the richest countries there is poverty and poverty falls most harshly on children."

Coverage of the summit in the US media made much of the abortion issue -- that never seems to go away -- "reproductive rights" is the code for it -- but Bellamy said it was not even supposed to have come up at all, having been squared away in preparatory meetings prior to the summit. The Canadian delegation reopened the debate, but in the upshot no new ground was broken, she said.

One happy result of the session was a surge of new energy at Unicef. Bellamy, who has worked on Wall Street and is a former politician (Democrat), is two years into her second five-year term. She indicated that she has no interest in returning to politics after UN service. Prior to Hillary Clinton, she was the top vote-getter among women running for office in New York.