The “hot” sessions were booked up early, and someone like Sidney Poitier felt lucky to squeeze into the back of “The Root Cause of Conflict.” Others scrambled for the most coveted invitations for private bashes like the Lehman Brothers’ Elton John concert at the Four Seasons restaurant. Just about everyone stood endlessly in line to pick up his freebie combination handheld computer and e-mail gizmo. Outside, protesters denounced the “World Exploitation Forum.” They wore colorful face paint, waved placards and hammed it up for the cameras. But their ranks were a lot thinner than at previous international gatherings in Seattle and Genoa–and, at least through Saturday, their passions far more subdued.
On both sides of the barricades, the forum was full of gab. There were the usual passing conversations as participants checked out each other’s ID badges. “I’ve been to Nanjing many times,” a top British banker told a Chinese official as the two shared an elevator. “Ah, yes, you have a subsidiary there,” the official promptly replied. But there was plenty of the serious talk that Davos is also known for. With more Arabic than Russian spoken in the corridors, the “bridging cultures” theme generated the most heated debate. “The idea of a bridge implies something separates them,” Harvard’s Samuel Huntington pointed out, keeping his “clash of civilizations” argument alive. Amre Moussa, secretary-general of the Arab League, insisted on interpreting–misinterpreting, according to Huntington–all such talk as an attack on the Islamic world. More diplomatically, Jordan’s Queen Rania (who outdazzled even the supermodels around) warned of the dangers of “a bipolar world, a subliminal segregation of us and them.”
The other great divide was between those who liked the big-city setting, and those who already were missing Davos. “No skiing, no fun, no nothing,” complained a California businessman who hastened to add: “Don’t quote me on this–they won’t invite me back.” A German CEO called the heady conclave “a refreshment for the brain” but complained that the forum was losing its focus, which, he claimed, would be easier to regain back in the Swiss resort town. The organizers announced that next year’s meeting will be held there again. After that, who knows? Despite closed streets, snarled traffic and scattered protests, New York liked–and contributed–to the glitzy show. “We should do our skiing in Switzerland,” one Davos veteran–New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg–told the participants. “This is the place for you to come.”
