New York: As the global business and political elite wind up a five-day meeting here with a speech by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, activists meeting in Brazil for an alternative summit urge the creation of a democratic mediation mechanism to deal with conflicts.

Annan is expected to warn the 2,700 participants at the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) that they ignore extreme poverty at their peril.

Participants spent the first four days discussing such issues as better market access for developing countries, official aid, and the role of religion in combating terrorism.

The final day's discussions will be more business-centered, said WEF official Frederic Sicre. Ministers of trade and technology would join businessmen to discuss how poor countries can sharpen their competitiveness to attract investment, he said.

A senior United Nations official said that Annan decided to speak at the closing plenary here "because it is more important and useful for him to address these fat cats than for him to go to Porto Alegre".

In Porto Alegre, Southern Brazil, participants at a rival event called the World Social Forum and gathering opponents of globalisation wrapped up three days of meetings on February 3.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson attended both meetings, but most senior UN officials remained at the WEF, which met in New York in a gesture of solidarity after the September 11 terror attacks in the United States.

At the Brazil event, activists blasted the tough post-September 11 turn in US foreign policy.

"The United States moved to impose its will by force, and a new Cold War climate was installed in the world," read in part the peace conference manifesto released at the conclusion of the event.

"The United Nations (UN) definitively lost its role, the other capitalist powers and nearly all the other governments of the world delegated to the United States the role of permanent terror agents," added the document.

Nobel Peace Prize winner from 1992 Rigoberta Menchu said that the UN had been undermined as the United States developed its war on terrorism in the wake of the attacks.