Lots of bloggers have already commented on this New York Times story about how U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Zalmay Khalilzad is catching flak for—the horror!—sitting next to an Iranian in Davos. But the Iranians have their own demons to exorcise:

When Timothy Garton-Ash, an Oxford professor, arrived at a lunch on the theme of "Political Islam and Democracy," he was seated where Samare Hashemi Shajareh [the close personal advisor of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] was originally supposed to sit. But Samare Hashemi Shajareh had refused to be seated opposite an Israeli journalist.

It's stupid when Iran plays these kinds of games, and it's stupid when the United States does, too.

UPDATE: I see that the FT's Gideon Rachman has a similar Iran anecdote from Davos:

Eventually I struggled downstairs and sat through the press conference. But a nap might have been a better use of my time. [Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr] Mottaki said almost nothing. The only amusing moment came when he said, gallantly, that he would like to take a question from one of the ladies. Unfortunately, the woman he motioned to turned out to be an Israeli journalist - so he refused to answer the question. Refusing to talk to people usually makes you look silly, I think - which is perhaps a lesson the White House should bear in mind, when thinking about Khalilzad's appearance in Davos.

Well said. 

JOEL SAGET/AFP/Getty Images

Further proof that blogging is injurious to your plans to enjoy Davos: Having sent off my previous post after 3 a.m., I awoke too late to show up at a UNICEF panel with the former child soldier Ismail Beah, whose bestselling memoir has just come under attack from a section of the Australian media. Last night, with my blogging duties in mind, I managed to forget the Google After-Hours Party, a much sought-after event where the likes of Bono, Bill Gates, and Tony Blair hobnob with the regular pass-holders. So this will definitely be my last post: In future years, if I return, it will be to enjoy myself fully rather than enlighten the cognoscenti.

The last full day of the Forum, Saturday, began to show a slight slackening of the pace, as many attendees started bidding farewell to Davos. (The official closing is on Sunday, with a final session expected to attract so few that it has been shifted from the plenary Congress Hall to a smaller room, and a lunch in the mountains, both of which are likely to be feel-good events and neither of which I intend to blog about.) There was a strong session on the global economic outlook, which nonetheless only confirmed that the outlook is mixed and that economic forecasting is usually slightly less reliable than meteorology.

FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/Getty

I attended one of the prestige private events, a lunch with the Japanese prime minister (who had flown down to Davos in the midst of a regular session of his country's parliament, the Diet, something that in the previous 37 years had only been done once by any of his predecessors). But the number of empty seats at the half-dozen tables around the PM testified to the declining salience of Japan, a country that two decades ago was seen as the world's economic powerhouse and, bluntly, no longer is.

Otherwise, it was a day of conversations—some accidental, some planned—with a host of friends from the multilateral world: Juan Somavia, the head of the International Labor Organization, EU Commissioner Peter Mandelson, Amnesty International Secretary General Irene Khan, former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo of the Yale Center on Globalization, and my old U.N. colleagues Zohreh Tabatabai and Nick Van Praag. Talking to these dedicated servants of the international system was itself a reminder of how little Davos had focused this year on multilateral institutions, once seen at the Forum as the foundation of global cooperation and now largely treated as somewhere between an irrelevance and an afterthought.

So, how would I wrap up this week's experience of Davos? A few observations, not meant to be comprehensive:

• The Forum remains, above all, a networking event. People come to meet and be met, and officials as well as executives expressed satisfaction with the large number of private and "bilateral" meetings they were able to hold in Davos. By this yardstick, the Forum was a success—as it always is.
• The panels were, as usual, of varying quality, with world-class speakers and a few slightly off their game. The scheduling—a huge challenge—meant that no one could really attend everything they'd have liked to, because each interesting panel clashed with another interesting panel.
• Some of the topics chosen were of limited interest, and some of the omissions surprising ones. There was surprisingly little discussion of U.S. politics in a presidential election year—and few American political figures were present. The first few days, thanks to the gyrations in the financial markets, prompted an excessive degree of short-termism in the conversation, which was unfortunate for an event that likes to think of itself as taking the grand and long view of the really important trends in the world.
• In my opening post, I mentioned I'd pay attention to India. There was an extraordinary number of Indians present. The movers and shakers from the worlds of business and politics ranged from the finance minister to the CEOs of all the top information technology companies. But what struck me was the extent to which India is now taken for granted at Davos, in a good way. There's scarcely a panel without an Indian on it, and most discussions of world affairs—economic or geopolitical—witnessed several mentions of India. This Forum afforded confirmation, if any were needed, that my homeland has truly arrived at Davos. It no longer needs any special effort to promote itself to this audience.
• I also promised to look at the attention paid to poverty and development. Some years ago, a World Social Forum was created as a challenge the World Economic Forum. This was the first year in nearly a decade that there wasn't a rival gathering proclaiming that "another world is possible." This is at least partly because Davos has quietly taken on board the same slogan, as this year's Forum demonstrated. The discussions of development and corporate social responsibility have reached a level of seriousness that can only be applauded by an old U.N. hand like me. Of course, action must follow and results have to be visible, but both are beginning to be seen, and the companies and political leaders at the Forum are in many cases responsible for that positive trend.

Finally—as the debris of the extensive Bahrain-sponsored lunch is cleared away and preparations begin for tonight's concert and the black-tie Gala Soirée—it is time to reflect on those peculiar habits of Davos Man (and Woman) that they will have to struggle to shed when they fly away from this snow-capped wonderland. These include, but are not limited to:

• The Davos bend-and-bob: the peculiar movement required to stretch your smart-card badge to one of the ubiquitous scanners that determine whether you can be granted entry, whether you can read your e-mail, and whether you can attend a session for which you may have forgotten to register.

• The furtive chest glance: The quick darting movement of the eye toward the dangling badge that sports a participant's name, which usually precedes a familiar exclamation of pleasure at meeting its wearer, whose identity you had completely forgotten until you saw his or her badge. (Davos is the only place where it is completely socially acceptable, when you meet a woman, to look quickly at her chest first. The operative adverb is "quickly.")

Enough amateur anthropology. Now for the real thing—time to don my glad rags and get ready for the Gala Soirée, which begins at 9 p.m. and goes into the wee hours—a veritable smorgasbord of food, drink, music and last-minute networking. Your faithful blogger relinquishes his keyboard at last. Ladies and gentlemen, it's been a pleasure.

Shashi Tharoor, a former Under Secretary General of the United Nations, was India's candidate in the 2006 race to succeed Kofi Annan as Secretary General and came second out of seven contenders. He is the award-winning author of 10 books, most recently The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cellphone: Reflections on India in the 21st Century. Visit him at www.shashitharoor.com.

You can find Tharoor's previous Diary entries here or at the following links:

• Davos Diary, Day 5: Never tempt Providence
• Day 4: Fatigue can't stop this blogger
• Day 3: Panels galore
• Day 2: Snowy arrival
• Day 1: Setting the scene

Our humble Davos narrator, Shashi Tharoor, gave a remarkably concise, eloquent defense of the United Nations during a panel on the topic "Rebuilding Brand America" (moderated by FP Editor in Chief Moisés Naím). Here's what Tharoor said, referring to News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch's comment that "everyone knows" that the United Nations is "a corrupt, ridiculous, dysfunctional place":

I was a bit taken aback by some of the references to the U.N., largely because many of the individual countries in the organization have a great deal of regard for the U.S. of course, and the U.S. has its way more often than not in the U.N. And the fact is that, you know, a lot of the demonstrators against the U.S. in many parts of the world are probably really saying, "Yankee go home, but take me with you."

So, the admiration is real, but at the same time, what on Earth is the alternative for the U.S.? This is the one organization that brings every country together. Many countries, especially smaller ones, send their best and most skilled diplomats to New York. It's a place where the U.S. can engage with the rest of the world, where the U.S. can advance its goals in partnership with others rather than on its own. I mean, what's not to like about an institution that helps the U.S. to share the burden? Sure, it's got its limitations. Dag Hammerskjold said 50 years ago that the U.N. wasn't created to take mankind to paradise, but rather to save humanity from hell. And sometimes that's the best the U.N. can do. It can prevent things from getting a whole lot worse, and it seems to me that the U.S. has a great deal of interest in working with the rest of the world at the U.N.

You can also watch the YouTube clip of Tharoor below. Skip to 29:10 to see his remarks:

An improvident editor at FP placed a hubristic headline on my last post: "Fatigue can't stop this blogger."

Never tempt Providence. Fatigue did stop this blogger Friday morning. Or maybe just plain laziness.

After four nights of minimal sleep, my body decided it didn't want to catch a 7 a.m. bus from Klosters to listen to President Musharraf assure a hot-ticket breakfast crowd that the fate of Pakistani democracy was safe in his hands. It went a step further and decided it could do without a serious discussion on Corporate Global Citizenship in the 21st Century, featuring British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Cisco Systems CEO John T. Chambers, and PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi.

JOEL SAGET/AFP/Getty Images

When I finally stirred myself and trudged out on a surprisingly sunny morning, the Klosters to Davos shuttle bus, supposedly scheduled at 20-minute intervals, took 35 minutes to arrive. Two fellow passengers were raving about the panel I'd just missed. Ever the diligent blogger, I pulled out my notepad: "What did they say?" An abashed silence followed. "I don't really recall," one attendee confessed. "Queen Rania of Jordan was seated right in the middle and I just looked at her the whole time."

I eventually surmised that the panelists had agreed that it made business sense for corporations to make social responsibility a priority. They've been saying that for years at Davos, of course, but this time there was an added flourish: Indra Nooyi declared that philanthropy had "unleashed the emotions" of PepsiCo's employees. Brown and Chambers agreed that customers are not just supportive, they are demanding that corporations become more socially and environmentally aware.

When I finally got to the Forum, I decided to pass up the Ukrainian lunch to which I'd been invited by Viktor Pinchuk, a son-in-law of ex-President Leonid Kuchma whose invitations had remained highly popular with the Davos glitterati (he was also the host of the relocated philanthropic round table I'd missed yesterday, on that occasion for no fault of mine). My choice was clear: the risk of long speeches on Ukraine versus a chance to catch up on the Davos buzz. The latter was useful, because it helped me realize that in attending only the panels that interested me I'd steered clear of what all the business journalists were focusing on: the loss by the French bank Société Générale of the small sum of $7.1 billion, which the bank was blaming on a reckless (and dishonest) trader—Barings all over again, except with more zeroes.

I'd also missed the interminable arguments about whether the world economy was in crisis or not (they don't know any more than you do) and whether it was the fault of the regulators or the speculators (or possibly both). As someone once famously said, if you put all the economists in the world end to end, they'd never reach a conclusion. I have never been a practitioner of the dismal science, so I skipped a BBC debate on global economics (though I commend it unseen to those who care, if only because its moderator, my friend Nik Gowing, knows how to keep an argument moving). And I returned to the topics that interested me.

Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

Just as well, because I caught two terrific panels back to back, which doesn't always happen in Davos. The first, on Indian innovation, was stimulating and educative, and it was attended (judging by the badges of the questioners) by a surprisingly large number of Davos spouses who had actually traveled or worked in India. The second was even better: a first-rate discussion on what could have been too well-worn a subject—development. Despite the absence of the advertised Kofi Annan (on a mediation trip in Kenya rather than on the stage in Davos), the panel featured Gordon Brown, Bill Gates, World Bank President Robert Zoellick, South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel, and the chairman of both Unilever and Ericsson, Michael Treschow, all ably moderated by PepsiCo's Indra Nooyi. The conversation managed to be both thoughtful and wide-ranging: In the span of an hour, the heavyweights spoke of skill-building and education, corruption and good governance, the empowerment of women, African agriculture, mobile telephony and entrepreneurship (and a lot else besides). Though the focus was principally on Africa—as if other regions don't still have major development challenges to overcome—it was a first-rate conversation, Brown especially coming off as an insightful and committed leader on the issue. If the British voters ever tire of him, he should be put in charge of a global development agency.

I managed to make an appearance at three of the six receptions to which I'd been invited (the fact that two were at the same hotel helped) before arriving at my dinner panel. I'd groaned at the topic—"The Rise of the Multicultural Couple"—and at first sight I was convinced this was going to be a disaster. There were five speakers, six paying dinner guests, and four Forum staff around the table. But it turned out to be a delightful discussion, covering inter-religious marriage, the case for cosmopolitanism, and even an exchange about the neurological consequences of falling in love. That Davos still retains the capacity to put on a panel like that humanizes the place.

Since yesterday's format appears to have won some approbation, I'll end with a few notes from the events I attended:

Most intriguing facts I learned about India today:

• One hundred fifty of the Fortune 500 companies have established R&D operations in India.
• In 2002, more people traveled by train in one day in India than by plane in an entire year.
• Of the 300 million children in India between the ages of 6 and 16 today, 270 million will reach adulthood without the benefit of a formal education.

Swiss Image/World Economic Forum

Most irrelevant observations about Davos: The "no-tie" rule proclaimed by founder Klaus Schwab, in an effort to preserve the informality of the Forum, is honored by the corporate types but not by the officials. At the development panel, Brown sported a splendid purple tie, Manuel a vivid red one, and Zoellick a drab navy tie. Far worse sartorially is the number of women wearing high heeled shoes and stiletto boots amidst the snow and the ice. How do they do it, one is tempted to marvel. But more to the point: Why do they do it?

Most memorable corridor confabs: I greeted my old friend Carl Bildt, the foreign minister of Sweden, most warmly, and only after a few minutes realized whom I'd interrupted him chatting with. It was the Duke of York. Davos rules prevent further indiscretion about the subsequent conversation, but even a staunch republican like me doesn't treat running into royalty lightly.

Most quotable one-liners:

• "Economics has made us interdependent and politics divides us. We need to bring our politics in line with our economics." –Trevor Manuel, finance minister of South Africa
• "The most significant breakthrough innovations are made out of fear." –Sunil Bharti Mittal, CEO of Bharti Airtel, India's largest telecom company
• "Cosmopolitans are rich; evangelicals are poor." –David McWilliams, Irish entrepreneur

Shashi Tharoor, a former Under Secretary General of the United Nations, was India's candidate in the 2006 race to succeed Kofi Annan as Secretary General and came second out of seven contenders. He is the award-winning author of 10 books, most recently The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cellphone: Reflections on India in the 21st Century. Visit him at www.shashitharoor.com.

You can find Tharoor's previous Diary entries here or at the following links:

• Day 4: Fatigue can't stop this blogger
• Day 3: Panels galore
• Day 2: Snowy arrival
• Day 1: Setting the scene

PHILIPPE DESMAZES/AFP/Getty Images

Author Ian Buruma, who is in Davos at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, has picked up on a tactic increasingly used by undemocratic countries such as China and Iran in defending themselves from international criticism: demanding that Westerners stop "imposing" their values on cultures that supposedly have a different understanding of what democracy means.

As Buruma put it me this morning, this is clearly self-serving hogwash. "It's much less a division between East and West along civilizational lines than some people like to see it," he said. "It's really a political division," he added, pointing out that the Indians and the Japanese, or even the Indonesians don't see things that way. Few people may buy the argument, Buruma said, but nonetheless it's an effective way of neutralizing the democracy issue because people don't want to be seen as dissing other cultures. "When people discuss this in terms of culture and civilization, then you get a lot of that pious stuff," he noted, referring to the kind of Kumbaya moments that former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami has made into a veritable Davos fetish. "People have the habit of expressing fine sentiments as soon as civilization and culture come up." 

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf pulled the culture card at a breakfast Buruma attended and found the Pakistani leader to be "completely out of touch," fixated on the notion that "any bad news about Pakistan is a distortion by the foreign press." After all, Nicolas Sarkozy, Gordon Brown, and George W. Bush had assured him that "everything is fine." Musharraf also tangled with Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch, who had the temerity to suggest that Pakistan's human rights record could use a little improvement. Musharraf's response, essentially "We have our own human rights," was underwhelming, to say the least.

FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/Getty Images

It's well past midnight in the Bidwell-Azarm apartment in Klosters as I sit down to review another long day at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Last night, I got to bed at 2:45 a.m. after giving you all a blow-by-blow(hard) account of all the panels I went to. Since I woke up three hours later and have staggered through the day, I'm going to be a lot more telegraphic about Thursday. In fact, I'm going to summarize the day in a different style altogether, just for a change. (If there are enough protests, I'll return to prose reporting on Friday). Herewith, my day in 10 easy points:

1. Misfires:

• Didn't register in time for the Tom Friedman-Al Gore double bill on climate change, which was sold out within minutes of being available for sign-up.

• Arrived at a scheduled lunch panel featuring George Soros and Walter Isaacson on philanthropy after a 15-minute journey and discovered they'd moved the venue to another hotel and neglected to inform the attendees. Unexpected bonus: Joined a lunch discussion on the water crisis around the world instead. Cloud attached to silver lining: Had to pay 90 Swiss francs, almost $75 now, for my salad.

2. Morning panel highlights: Fascinating discussion on peace and stability featuring four beleaguered Muslim leaders: President Karzai of Afghanistan, President Musharraf of Pakistan, "Chief Adviser" (de facto Prime Minister) of Bangladesh Fakhruddin Ahmed, and Deputy Prime Minister Bahram Salih of Iraq. All inveighed against terrorism and extremism, defended the ways in which their countries were run and sought the world's help in promoting economic growth and political stability in their lands. Musharraf proved the ablest at swatting back tough questions; Karzai at ducking them. Asked (by me) what exactly he meant when he said that in his region extremism had been a "tool of policy," and whether this related to his previously expressed view that terrorism was being exported his way from across his border with Pakistan, Karzai replied, "Mr. Tharoor, I have just had a good visit with President Musharraf. I'm not going to say any more."

3. Panel disappointments: A bland performance by Musharraf in a hugely attended double-bill with Henry Kissinger, who was supposed to ask him three questions but tossed him two softballs instead. Musharraf repeated the points he'd just made at the previous panel.

4. Afternoon panel highlights: A first-rate discussion on the perils of Internet terrorism, featuring such heavy hitters as U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Britain's Leader of the Opposition David Cameron, head of Human Rights Watch Kenneth Roth, and feisty Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid. Lots of pithy insight about the use of cyberspace to recruit terrorists and to wage war, plus a side argument about the definition of terrorism and whether Israel was shooting itself in the foot by denouncing even attacks on its soldiers, not just civilians, as terrorist attacks.

5. Afternoon panel disappointments: A wasted hour-long Middle East panel chaired by Tony Blair and oddly featuring three Israelis (President Shimon Peres, Foreign Minister Livni and Defense Minister Barak) and only one Palestinian (Prime Minister Salam Fayyad). Not one person from this impressive galaxy said a single thing we hadn't heard before, and the audience wasn't allowed to ask questions.

6. Dinner panel: I found myself speaking on whether "globalization = cultural homogenization," along with the likes of Québec Premier Jean Charest, London Mayor Ken Livingstone, genius cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the CEO of Burger King. We all agreed that it doesn't, but had fun coming up with ideas and anecdotes about cultural diversity.

7. Uneven discussions: First, the water panel, an interesting but complicated topic that had been discussed earlier in the Forum and which left me feeling I'd walked in halfway through a suspense movie and couldn't quite figure out the plot. Second, a discussion on "Brand America" with impressive panelists (starting with Rupert Murdoch) and chaired by FP's own Moisés Naím, which nonetheless went all over the place—including a bizarre attack on the United Nations by Murdoch, supported by a Bahraini royal—rather than focusing on its declared purpose of devising recommendations to the next U.S. President on how to improve America's global image.

8. Memorable informal encounters: An animated conversation on the margins with the top leaders of Bangladesh's interim government, and another at the Tata reception with two of India's more impressive cabinet ministers. Also a chat with Bombay society maven Parmeshwar Godrej, currently under pressure from Muslim fundamentalists to apologize for having hosted Salman Rushdie at her home, who is refusing to buckle under despite threats of a boycott of her company's products.

9. One-liners of the day:

• "I don't agree with the notion of Brand America. A country is not a brand and cannot be sold." – French ad tycoon Maurice Lévy

• "Foreign Minister Livni has just told me her parents were arrested by the British. Being prime minister of Britain means having to go around the world apologizing to everybody." – Tony Blair, looking remarkably unapologetic

• "As a business journalist, I feel like I've gone hunting with Dick Cheney and some sidekick has just released all the pheasants in front of me so I can't miss them." – reporter marveling at the availability of quoteworthy CEOs in every hallway

10. Change of plan: Thanks to the lateness of the hour and President Musharraf's repeating himself in the two sessions I've heard him on already, I'll skip a breakfast with him organized by a Pakistani businessman Friday morning. Midway through the Forum, and particularly at the end of a Davos day featuring six panels, three breakfasts, two lunches, four receptions, and a blog diary to maintain, my borrowed bed looks a lot more inviting than a 7 a.m. bus from Klosters. Good night...

Before Bill Gates even had chance to present his ideas for "creative capitalism," the National Review's Larry Kudlow had already misrepresented Gates's argument:

I just have to smile when a billionaire like Bill Gates turns a cold shoulder to the blessings capitalism bestows. Or when his buddy, Warren Buffett, broadcasts the importance of hiking tax rates on successful earners and investors. Look fellas, the command-and-control, state-run economics experiment was tried. It was called the Soviet Union. If you hadn't noticed, it was a miserable failure.

What's in the drinking water at this place called Davos?

Of course, the Wall Street Journal article from which Kudlow based his comments explicitly noted, "Mr. Gates isn't abandoning his belief in capitalism as the best economic system."

Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

And if you look at what Gates actually said, he didn't call for governments to seize control of the means of production. Nor, truth be told, did he actually say anything profoundly new. He just wants to push for "an approach where governments, businesses, and nonprofits work together to stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or gain recognition, doing work that eases the world's inequities." 

Another Davos-goer mentioned in Gates's speech, FP contributor C.K. Prahalad, has long advocated that businesses sell to the "bottom of the pyramid"—the poorest of the poor. Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto, named in 2005 by FP and Prospect magazine as one of the world's 100 top public intellectuals, literally wrote the book on why capitalism runs aground in some of the poorer areas of the world. De Soto also won the Cato Institute's "Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty" in 2004. So Gates is well within the bounds of acceptable capitalist discourse.

Maybe he's wrong—and in today's WSJ article FP contributor Bill Easterly raises an important question about the effectiveness of efforts to sell to the poor—but Gates is no socialist. He also recognizes, as he said in his speech, that "profits are not always possible when business tries to serve the very poor" and that we need to find other incentives—not Soviet diktats—for companies that do so. Gates's final closing remarks were a humble plea for market-driven efforts to combat poverty:

I'd like to ask everyone here—whether you're in business, government or the non-profit world—to take on a project of creative capitalism in the coming year. It doesn't have to be a new project; you could take an existing project, and see where you might stretch the reach of market forces to help push things forward. When you award foreign aid, when you make charitable gifts, when you try to change the world—can you also find ways to put the power of market forces behind the effort to help the poor?

That's hardly a call to implement the recommendations of Das Kapital. Too bad Kudlow would rather launch ideological polemics and attack strawmen than consider Gates's ideas on their merits.

JOEL SAGET/AFP/Getty Images

Imagine the following scenario: 

Water, the source of human survival, enters the global marketplace and political arena. Corporate giants, private investors, and corrupt governments vie for control of our dwindling supply, prompting protests, lawsuits, and revolutions from citizens fighting for the right to survive. Wars of the future will be fought over water, not oil. Past civilizations have collapsed from poor water management. Can the human race survive?"

This is the plot synopsis for an upcoming documentary film Blue Gold: World Water Wars, but it could just as well be a quote from Ban Ki-moon at today's World Economic Forum panel, "Time is Running Out for Water." The U.N. chief painted an equally sobering picture of the potential effects of a global water shortage:

The consequences for humanity are grave. Water scarcity threatens economic and social gains and is a potent fuel for wars and conflict.”

It's not just the U.N. that is warning of an impending crisis. A report on climate change and conflict by the NGO International Alert highlights water shortages and their potentially aggravating effects on violent conflicts around the world. Although the report outlines some pretty worrisome consequences of water shortages, conflict need not lead to war, an author of the report tells the Times of London, but can result in opportunities for collaboration and innovation. For more information on freshwater resources around the world, check out the Pacific Institute's Web site.

In his Davos appearance today with Henry Kissinger, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf complained about media coverage of his country's nuclear weapons:

We are a nuclear state, and it is just unfortunate that we are seen to be unstable; that our nuclear assets can fall into wrong hands, into the hands of the terrorists... this is an Islamic bomb that Pakistan has. I really don't understand why the world calls it an Islamic bomb, and why there is no Hindu bomb, or a Jew bomb, or a Christian bomb, or a Buddhist bomb. Why is this bomb an Islamic bomb? I don't understand. And the man on the street in Pakistan does not understand this.

UPDATE: I asked Catherine Collins and Douglas Frantz, coauthors of The Nuclear Jihadist: The True Story of the Man Who Sold the World's Most Dangerous Secrets... And How We Could Have Stopped Him, to weigh in on the historical context for Musharraf's complaint. Their verdict? He's full of it:

President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan ignores history when he complains that he doesn't understand why his country's nuclear weapons are referred to as "the Islamic bomb."

When the late Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto initiated the bomb project in 1972, he took a tour of Muslim countries with hat in hand to get money. Libya's Moammar Gadhafi sent couriers carrying suitcases of cash and the royals in Saudi Arabia provided free oil. To show his gratitude, Bhutto named a cricket stadium after Gadhafi and a town after King Faisal.

In fact, it was Bhutto himself, sitting his jail cell in 1978 awaiting execution, who defending his nuclear ambitions by writing, "The Christian, Jewish and Hindu civilizations have this power. The communist powers also possess it. Only the Islamic civilization is without it, but that position (is) about to change."

Finally, the father of the Islamic bomb, the rogue Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan, often cited his anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiments in defending his nation's nuclear arsenal and one of his motivations in selling nuclear technology to Iran and Libya was to spread the weapon to other Muslim countries and divert attention from Pakistan.

Swiss Image/World Economic Forum

In his first Diary entry, Shashi Tharoor noted about Davos, "Invitations are prized and much sought after, even though they have to be paid for in real money." So, how much does it cost to go to Davos? Andrew Ross Sorkin reports for the New York Times:

Merely to be eligible for an invitation, a corporate leader must pay an annual fee of 42,500 Swiss francs, or nearly $39,000. On top of that, he or she has to pay an additional $20,000 or so to attend the conference. (That's just the cost of admission — private planes, limousines and fancy ski outfits are, of course, extra.)

And what if business executives want to get invited to some private sessions for industry leaders? The annual cost for that is close to $230,000.

The tab rises to about $412,000 (450,000 Swiss francs) if you want to be counted among the conference's strategic sponsors and bring a delegation of up to five along for the fun.

Yikes. The funny thing about business leaders is that they could probably get the same information and meet the same intellectual and government contacts elsewhere for free, but they pay the exorbitant fees anyway. After all, such individuals are famous and sought after because they're always sharing their ideas in the public arena. Of course, any such encounters probably wouldn't be as convenient, and they certainly wouldn't be as fun. As Tharoor put it, there is "something heady and exhilarating about being able to have them all in one spot in such a short span of time."

I spoke with Ian Buruma, noted Dutch author, this morning about what he's been seeing in Davos. Buruma first attended the conference in 2000 and hasn't been back since, so he had an interesting perspective, eight years later, on how the discussion there had been completely upended:

It's my second time, and it's the complete opposite of the first time, which shows you how perceptions and moods can change. The first time was in 2000, and the mood of the conference then was that the United States was so far ahead of the rest of the world that nobody would ever catch up again, because it was the height of the high-tech boom and all that. And now it's the sort of the opposite, and the U.S. is kind of humble and clearly desperate for money from the Arabs and the Chinese and so on forth... Condi Rice talking about mistakes having been made.

What everybody's talking about in the halls, of course, is the economic crisis. And one of the subthemes is that the West and the U.S. in particular needs to be propped up more and more money from countries that are not democratic. And so the discussion is what the consequences of that are. One of the answers has been that the Gulf States and China and so on should be pressed for more transparency in their financial transactions.

So, just as the dominance of the U.S. was a given in 2000, the so-called shift in power from the Atlantic world led by the United States to a very new world seems to be the received opinion now.

Buruma's observation is a poignant reminder that recent news events have a way of distorting our perceptions. We humans have a tendency to make straight-line projections into the future, assuming that the trends we see today will continue inexorably tomorrow. Perhaps eight years from now, the Davoisie will be dissecting the reasons why China and India crashed and burned and Africa became the new global economic powerhouse. (OK, that may be a little far-fetched.)

Buruma also noted that one big name in particular has been a no-show this year:

The name Bush has been barely mentioned by anybody. It's like he's a complete irrelevancy.

PIERRE VERDY/AFP/Getty Images

The first real day of the formal Forum got off to a lively start Wednesday morning with a panel on the geopolitics of a divided world. At least it did for me: There were several other panels to choose from. Selecting which of six or seven alternative (and parallel) panels to attend is the most difficult thing you can do in Davos (other than learning to suffer silently through security). It's possible for two people to spend the same week here and experience two entirely different Forums.

But a divided world is one of my concerns, so I made a beeline for that session (assuming that bees negotiate paths involving makeshift temporary passageways, wood-plank paths, tent-flaps, and multiple floors). The shuttle from my home base in Klosters was late, but that meant shorter security lines, since the majority of participants follow Swiss norms of punctuality and throng the airport-style scanners early in time for the first panels.

By the time I snuck in, the discussion had warmed up nicely. There was much intelligent talk about the changing world that will confront the next American president, and thoughtful concern about the need to restore U.S. soft power — defined by a panelist as America's reputation for legitimacy and competence internationally, both categories in which it has suffered under the Bush administration. A senior Chinese participant (I'm trying to honor Davos's non-attribution policies here) argued convincingly that China has no interest in promoting any division in the world: "It's our first chance since the Opium Wars of the 1840s to develop and modernize our country, and all we want is peace, not confrontation anywhere in the world." Reacting to comments about China's lack of democracy, he pointed out to the Americans (and the Frenchman) present that neither country had given the vote to women until the 1920s, and the United States had denied it to many blacks until the 1960s. "Give us time, too," he said, adding for good measure, "And don't expect us to be like you."

An Indian strategic analyst pointed out that power and influence are not the same thing: the United States is the world's sole superpower but its influence is on the wane, and the need for coalition-building is increasing. He dismissed the moderator's talk of "Chindia" — a convergence between India and China—by tartly observing that the two countries do not share norms and values. In today's world, he pointed out, economic interdependence has nothing to do with political closeness—an intriguing insight given that China will overtake the United States as India's largest trading partner in the next two years. The moderator observed in closing that the panel had featured the rare spectacle of a Chinese offering lessons in democracy and an American offering lessons in humility!

Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

Someone please explain to me how this is supposed to be justice. A 23-year-old journalism student named Sayad Parwez Kambaksh supposedly goes online, finds an interesting paper, and prints it out. He supposedly brings it to class at Balkh University, discusses it with a teacher and some fellow students. The paper gets copied and distributed. Some students find it objectionable; they say it is offensive and that it insults Islam. They complain to the government.

Kambaksh is arrested in October and put in jail. He says he had nothing to do with the paper. His case goes to trial, but he has no lawyer. In fact, his family is not even aware that he's put on trial. A panel of three judges decides that he should be put to death because the paper he supposedly distributed "humiliates Islam." The Afghan Independent Journalists' Association reports that any paper in question may have downloaded from an Iranian blog, which contained articles questioning the origins of the Koran, among other controversial things.

Now, his case goes to the first of two appeal courts. But Fazel Wahab, the chief judge in the province where the trial took place, says that only President Hamid Karzai can pardon the student, since Kambaksh supposedly confessed to having violated tenets of Islam. Incidentally, Wahab has never read the paper (to be fair, he was also not on the panel that convicted Kambaksh). 

Kambaksh isn't the only Afghan journalist who's gotten into trouble with the law. Ghows Zalmai was also arrested three months ago, charged with distributing a translation of the Koran that clerics did not accept. Religious scholars have also called for him to be put to death.

At any rate, all of this raises the question: Why did the U.S. go into Afghanistan and topple the Taliban, only to have it be replaced with a system like this? So far, no comment from Karzai, who is attending the World Economic Forum in Davos. But he'd better step up.

PAUL ELLIS/AFP/Getty Images

Tony Blair is playing host with the most as co-chair of this year's World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland. But will he overshadow his successor, sitting British Prime Minister Gordon Brown (pictured above after winning the Labor Party nomination last year), at this week's meetings?

While some find Gordo's looks charmingly unique, the general sentiment seems to be that Brown will continue to play second fiddle to Tony Blair in world popularity contests. Even those impressed by Brown's policy acumen acknowledge his charisma deficit and lack of PR flair.

Here at Passport, we'll be keeping tabs on the media attention paid to both statesmen, and see if Brown indeed is doomed to be always a bridesmaid, never a bride.

FABRICE COFFERINI/AFP/Getty

This line from U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's speech today in Switzerland would be a lot more convincing, frankly, if Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson hadn't canceled his trip to Davos at the last minute because he's busy trying to avert a recession at home: 

The U.S. economy is resilient, its structure is sound, and its long-term economic fundamentals are healthy.

So, just how sound is the U.S. economy? Earlier this week, FP spoke with preeminent economist Martin Feldstein, who heads the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), to weigh in. NBER is the organization that officially designates when the U.S. economy is in recession, so Feldstein is an authority, if not the authority, on the dreaded "r" word. Check out the interview, today's Seven Questions.

I'm glad to see all that free Château Lafite isn't going to Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman's head:

Another problem for me at Davos is that, whilst I keep bumping into famous people, I can never think of anything to say to them. This morning the first person I saw as I left my hotel was George Soros. I fell into step with him, and after a long pause said something like: "It's looking quite bad on the markets, isn't it." He agreed. Definitely a bit dodgy. I've heard it from Soros himself.

Swiss Image/World Economic Forum

"Come back, Bill Gates!"

That's the opening line from Brian Winter's illuminating profile of Mexican telecom tycoon Carlos Slim Helú, "How Slim Got Huge," which ran in FP's November/December 2007 issue. Winter was pining away for Gates, a self-made billionaire who—unlike Slim—got rich thanks primarily to the power of his brain, not his Rolodex. 

Well, rumor has it Gates is looking to make a splash at this year's Davos: 

Gates, a loyal and normally upbeat participant, plans a potentially provocative speech titled "A New Approach to Capitalism in the 21st Century." A spokesman for Microsoft was cagey about the details. But people involved in his appearance said Gates would take both big business and government to task for what he views as their inadequate response to the twin scourges of disease and poverty in the developing world.

World Economic Forum chief Klaus Schwab has granted Gates an unusual amount of time by Davos standards, 30 minutes starting at 12:20 p.m. EST on Thursday, to make his case. We'll be tuning in.

Swiss Image/World Economic Forum

It was snowing in Davos Tuesday as I drove to my base for the week, the cozy Klosters apartment of my New York friends Truman Bidwell and Mariam Azarm. Traffic thickened on the icy roads, and I nearly failed to make it on time for my first panel, a session with the “Young Global Leaders” (YGLs) of the “Asian Century.” This panel was not quite Davos, since the World Economic Forum officially begins Wednesday and since this panel was taking place not in Davos but in Klosters, 20 minutes away. But it was also very much in what the Forum likes to call “the spirit of Davos.”

The YGLs are the latest iteration of what the Forum used to hail as “Global Leaders of Tomorrow,” bright overachievers under 40 who have already shown the kind of promise that makes their prospects of leadership a fairly safe bet. There were 120 YGLs assembled in Klosters to hear three Indians and a Singaporean of Indian origin discuss whether the “Asian Century” was fact or fiction. The debate was lively enough, and the questions from the YGLs (two of whom identified themselves as parliamentarians) flowed fast-but-not-furious, so the session ran comfortably over the allotted 90 minutes. Some predictable things were said, but some startling insights emerged as well, and the panelists’ metaphors became increasingly inventive.

India’s minister of commerce and industry, Kamal Nath, deserved a prize for this one: “We were passengers on the [global economic] bus; we didn’t drive it, we didn’t make the bus, and we had no idea where it was going. Now we want to control the steering wheel and choose the right road.” Or on shared responsibility for climate change: “We’re not at the head table, but we have the same menu.” Nath has just published a book called India’s Century, and fellow panelist Kishore Mahbubani, dean of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, has one coming out titled The New Asian Hemisphere. Perhaps they now need to do another panel titled “The Indian Hemisphere”!

Swiss Image/World Economic Forum

I spent the rest of the afternoon getting organized, taking the bus to Davos to register and pick up the Forum briefcase, which was loaded to the gills with conference materials and most important of all, the indispensable badge without which movement anywhere in Davos this week would be impossible. The badge hasn’t changed much in appearance since I first came here 11 years ago, but it’s acquired the properties of a “smart card” now and stores all sorts of information, from your photograph to the sessions you’ve signed up for. It’s color-coded (participants wear a white one, aides get green, spouses pink, staff blue), and participants of ministerial rank are further identified by a shiny disc.

The caste system in Davos is an elaborate one, the various gradations of privilege governing levels of access to panels, rooms, and facilities. That was as I remembered it; but what has undoubtedly worsened, in terms of both ubiquity and pointlessness, is security. There were more security personnel around than participants, and they specialized in the unnecessary restrictions so beloved of security people everywhere: You could not alight from a vehicle except where they said you could; you could not walk on a certain side of the street; and you had to take your jackets off and go through a metal detector every time you passed the Congress Center, even if you didn’t want to go in. I nearly missed the last shuttle bus home to Klosters because the walk to the bus stop went past the center and I was obliged to make a detour to be frisked. Only security people can explain the logic of stopping a person hurrying down the street in order to oblige him to go where he doesn’t need to so that you can scan his body parts for weapons he wouldn’t have had a chance to use if you hadn’t stopped him in the first place.

Swiss Image/World Economic Forum

The first of Davos’s plethora of receptions took place on Tuesday, the welcome reception hosted by the genial Prof. Schwab, who had started it all back in 1971. Old friends were hailed, new acquaintances made and soon forgot. Participants milled about in a swirling, eddying throng, badges hanging obligatorily from their necks, while waiters circulated with trays of canapés, mainly featuring dried meat. Some of the guests may well have felt like dried meat themselves, as others stole surreptitious glances at the names and colors on their badges to decide if their wearers were worth talking to or not (most often not). The only cheerful faces at the reception seemed to belong to those who had got out of the stock market before the current nose dive.

The World Economic Forum doesn't officially start until Wednesday, but I have already slipped and fallen on the ice once, been searched three times, and lost a glove somewhere in the slush. It can only get better.

Shashi Tharoor

It was 11 years ago that I first discovered the sleepy little village of 10,000 snowbound inhabitants in the heart of Switzerland that had already become a synonym for what's hot in global economic thought. As a United Nations official working with then Secretary General Kofi Annan, I accompanied him to Davos several times starting in 1997. I haven't been back for many years now, and having left the U.N. nine months ago, I'm returning for the first time in an individual capacity, as an Indian writer and columnist (for The Times of India and the Hindu) and as chairman of the Dubai-based but India-focused Afras Ventures.

I am intrigued, of course, that this ski resort in the Swiss Alps, blessed with essentially one main street and 20 overcrowded hotels of varying quality, annually hosts a five-day talkfest that attracts an astonishing number of the world's top entrepreneurs, thinkers, and political leaders. What began in 1971 as a European affair—originally intended by its founder, Geneva Professor Klaus Schwab, to help Europe's businessmen learn American management techniques—has become a World Economic Forum "committed to improving the state of the world." Invitations are prized and much sought after, even though they have to be paid for in real money. The atmosphere of cutting-edge policy debate is sustained by an impressive array of intellectuals, thinkers, and writers among the "faculty," and the consistently high quality of the attendees has ensured that Davos gathers more heads of government in one spot than any other place bar the United Nations General Assembly.

The prime ministers and presidents do appear on panels, but they are largely in Davos to chat up the big businessmen present, who might, after all, be persuaded to channel millions of dollars in productive investment to their countries. And they're there to talk to each other in private, away from the glare of the TV cameras and free of the cumbersome trappings of a formal state visit. The real action in Davos isn't the televised panel discussions—on subjects ranging from "Believing in the Future" to "Beyond Bretton Woods: Who Should Lead the Way?"—that are what the outside world sees of the Forum.

Swiss Image/World Economic Forum

The key meetings happen elsewhere: in private dinners, at receptions (hosted by companies, governments, and companies trying to woo governments), and over drinks in hotel bars. The most vital ones are "bilaterals," one-on-ones organized precisely to take advantage of the excuse Davos gives both parties to be present at the same place at the same time. On my first visit, Yasser Arafat and Benjamin Netanyahu met, Microsoft wiz Bill Gates (not yet creator of the world's most generously endowed foundation) rubbed shoulders for the first time with the then newly elected U.N. chief, and the president of the World Bank had a friendly chat with U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, something surprisingly more difficult to orchestrate in Washington. The World Economic Forum works extraordinarily well as a place to meet and be met. And for all its elitism, there's a curious leveling involved in a place where even prime ministers need to introduce themselves occasionally to strangers—especially if the strangers happen to be world leaders or titans of industry who aren't planning to visit their capitals any time soon.

Swiss Image/World Economic Forum

But if the real business of Davos is business, ideas are the currency of exchange. So, I'm going to spend a fair amount of my time watching the movers and shakers at work, in addition to attending some of the more intriguing panel discussions (three of which I'm slated to speak on myself). I'll pay close attention to the sizable Indian presence, partly because I'm Indian myself but partly because Davos is where the new India announced its coming of age as a global economic presence over the years, culminating in a starring role at the 2006 Forum. And as a former U.N. hand, I'll be attentive to the tension between the Forum's stated aim of improving the state of the world and its image in the eyes of its critics as a crony gathering of globalization's winners, determined to protect their interests at the expense of the world's poor and marginalized.

FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/Getty Images

Kofi Annan used his attendance in 1998 to call for a new partnership between the U.N. and the global private sector, which led to a "Global Compact" under which businesses promise to adhere to U.N. human rights, labor and environmental principles. His successor, Ban Ki-moon, is not on this year's preliminary list of participants, but other U.N. and non-governmental organization officials will be on hand to remind the denizens of Davos that they cannot afford to overlook the poor. As Annan once put it: "We cannot be secure amidst starvation. We cannot build peace without alleviating poverty. We cannot build freedom on foundations of injustice."

Or can we? Maybe, in the course of the week, we'll find out.

Shashi Tharoor, a former Under Secretary General of the United Nations, was India's candidate in the 2006 race to succeed Kofi Annan as Secretary General and came second out of seven contenders. He is the award-winning author of 10 books, most recently The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cellphone: Reflections on India in the 21st Century. Visit him at www.shashitharoor.com.

Swiss Image/World Economic Forum

The first temporary denizens, of Davos, Switzerland, are beginning to trickle in for this year's annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. (The meeting doesn't officially start until Wednesday, Jan. 23, and it lasts until Sunday, Jan. 27, but the pre-meetings are getting underway.)

One person who's not going to make it to Davos this year? U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who has his hands full at home with the subprime mortgage crisis and canceled at the last minute. Also not coming: Brangelina, the Hollywood power couple whom many Davoisie complained were a distraction from the real business at hand (I have some sympathy for this gripe, having witnessed firsthand the hoopla surrounding Brad and Angie at last year's Clinton Global Initiative).

There are still plenty of names to watch, of course. Bono is back, for one. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is attending for the first time and will be giving Wednesday's opening address. Pakistan's tottering president, Pervez Musharraf, is sure to attract attention wherever he goes. And many of the usual Davos suspects are returning: Microsoft's Bill Gates, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, Tony Blair and his protégé, Gordon Brown, not to mention former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, fresh from winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

Here on Passport, our main guide to this year's festivities will be Shashi Tharoor, an acclaimed author, one of India's most influential foreign-affairs pundits, and a former Under Secretary General of the United Nations to boot. We'll also be checking in periodically with noted author and columnist Ian Buruma, who will be giving us his take on the people and ideas he comes across at the conference, and we may hear from some other folks as time allows. And finally, my colleagues at FP and I will be keeping an eye out for the most interesting moments from among the 233 sessions on offer and from coverage elsewhere. So check back all week by clicking on the davos08 category, and enjoy the show!