After weeks of political wrangling, the UN member states last night eventually agreed on a final declaration to tackle global poverty and reform the organisation. But poor nations appear to have lost out in the watered-down document, writes Rosalind Ryan.
The summit is being billed as a make or break moment for reforms designed to prepare the multinational body for the challenges of the 21st century.
Just hours before 150 world leaders arrived for the start of the New York summit, the diplomats reached consensus - but the final draft falls far short of the sweeping reforms set out by the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, earlier this year.
When the assembly opens this afternoon, leaders will have before them a document that has been continuously cropped in order to win support from all 191 member states.
In what he described as a "high risk gamble", Mr Annan and other leaders of the general assembly decided to drop the issues on which there was no agreement, decide on language for which they thought they could win approval, and put a clean text to member states.
The prime minister, Tony Blair, is due to address the assembly this afternoon to seek support for a resolution he has tabled asking other governments to take action not only against people who practise terror, but those who encourage or support it.
However - in a move that has come to symbolise the confusion surrounding the summit - the proposed resolution offers no actual definition of what constitutes "incitement to commit" terrorist acts.
Downing Street says the draft resolution strikes a balance between the need to prevent terrorist acts and to protect human rights, but civil rights groups say the bill could make it easier for corrupt governments to target their opponents.
New York-based Human Rights Watch said the resolution would give governments a pretext to suppress peaceful expression.
"Those who incite others to commit terrorism must be prosecuted," said Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch. "But the resolution's sponsors have made it easy for abusive governments to invoke the resolution to target peaceful political opponents, impose censorship and close mosques, churches and schools."
The main aim of the summit is to work out how to progress the Millennium Development Goals - key targets on issues such as education, health and hunger which were agreed at the Millennium Summit in 2000.
You can find out more about the Millennium Goals in this stunning gallery of photographs from around the world, compiled by Guardian Unlimited in conjunction with Panos Pictures.
These pictures are part of a free exhibition at the Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf, London SE1, running until September 18.
But today's meeting, on the 60th anniversary of the founding of the UN, has been overshadowed by the recent report into the Iraq oil-for-food scandal and infighting between the member states.
The Millennium Development Goals include targets to cut extreme poverty and child mortality by half and reverse the spread of HIV/Aids by 2015. It was hoped this target would be achieved after the G8 summit in July, when world leaders pledged to double aid to Africa by 2010.
But on August 1, John Bolton was appointed as the US ambassador to the UN. He is known to be a harsh critic of the organisation.
Shortly after his appointment, the US produced a comprehensive set of revisions to the draft resolutions. References to the Millennium Goals were removed in favour of more general wording on assistance programmes and targets, while pledges to resource the UN according to its needs were removed.
Subsequently, the US made concessions, including restoring a reference to the Millennium Development Goals, but major disagreements remain.
Other issues that have caused concern to the US and other member states are whether the international community should intervene to prevent genocide, whether the Millennium Goals will be acknowledged as definitive indicators of development, whether a more powerful human rights council should replace the existing human rights commission, whether the US will accept references to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, and how terrorism should be defined and the responsibilities of governments to tackle it.
In an interview with the BBC's Today programme, Mr Annan was unwilling to say whether the declaration showed the inability of many UN members to come to agreement with the US.
It is something that happens in all parliamentary processes," he said. "You put forward a bill and you never get everything that you put up. This happens even in a national parliament, where there is one nationality, where people share the same common goal, have the same vision of their nation, and where they want to go.
"And here you have 191 [nations] with different ambitions, different perceptions, but, at the same time, all anxious to strengthen collective security. That was the purpose of this meeting - and to fight poverty."
Aid organisations have already criticised the watered down goals, and said they were disappointed with the UN's final declaration.
Oxfam described the development section of the final draft as a "recycling of old pledges", while Save the Children said the chance of a historic breakthrough on poverty had "all but slipped through the fingers of world leaders".
Anti-poverty campaigners have also accused the UN member states of failing to defend their commitments on aid, debt and HIV/Aids under pressure from the US.
Development agency ActionAid said it had seen a leaked revised text on development to be debated at the summit.
"The biggest-ever summit of world leaders seems poised to hand out small change to the world's poor," Ramesh Singh, the chief executive of the agency, said.
African countries had hoped the summit would see them play a bigger role in the UN security council, but those hopes may now have been quashed following the internal arguments.
Writing for South Africa's Mail and Guardian, Jerome Cartillier said: "A failure to find consensus on proposed reforms of the United Nations security council has snuffed Africa's hopes to see its voice being heard louder within the international organisation."
