By Charles J. Hutzler

Associated Press Writer

From: World Tibet Network News, Monday, August 28, 1995

BEIJING (AP) -- After five months of controversy over logistics, delegates to two weeks of U.N.-backed meetings on women hope to focus debate on the real agenda: the problems of women worldwide.

Some 3,000 of the approximately 24,000 delegates have arrived in Beijing for a forum of private advocacy groups, which opens Wednesday. They hope to influence the work of the United Nations 4th World Conference on Women, from Sept. 4-15, which is expected to draw another 6,000.

Some of the world's leading women politicians are attending the U.N. conference. First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton announced Friday that she would attend over the objections of critics of China's human rights record.

The leader of the Chinese delegation, Chen Muhua, and other officials pronounced the city ready Sunday after inspecting the main conference facilities and the airport, state-run media said. About 18,000 delegates are due in Beijing on Monday, the Xinhua news agency said.

To give them a good first impression, Chinese youths in pink T-shirts and blue pants have been stationed at the airport as greeters, the national evening news showed. In the city, buildings have been draped with red banners and potted flower arrangements placed along the streets.

The festive mood contrasts with the conference's weighty agenda. Delegates will debate and adopt a blueprint for action to alleviate poverty, abolish slavery and prostitution, stop violence, assure equality under the law and promote equal access to health care, education and jobs.

Aware of criticisms that big U.N. meetings amount to lofty goals without commitments, organizers have pledged to push governments into setting specific targets.

The women taking part in the conclave of non-governmental organizations, or NGO Forum, are here to add to the pressure. Many of them are grassroots activists with little money but lots of commitment.

"The thing is to be together, to show solidarity," said Jacqueline Castro, a Chilean native who lives in Holland. She and her 10-year-old daughter are staying in $10-a-night hotel, with mattresses on the floor and a bathroom down the hall, on the outskirts of Beijing.

Castro, a teacher of music theory, will perform South American folk music on Sept. 4, one of the 5,000 exhibits, workshops and performances scheduled for the forum.

Chinese organizers have worked to bring the activists together -- but keep them isolated in a suburb 30 miles out of town. In March it moved the forum site from eastern Beijing to Huairou. It also challenged forum accreditation for Tibetan, Taiwanese and human rights groups.

Thousands of the 35,000 people who signed up to attend the forum complained they did not get visas, sometimes without any explanation from Chinese consulates.

Sylvia Ordonez, in charge of logistics for the NGO Forum, said she has personally called Chinese consular officers around the world when she learned of someone being denied a visa. "Every participant counts," Ordonez said.