In a half-forgotten, time-warp-trapped building in the world's most energetic city, three days of discussions have been taking place that ought to help the world get a grip on a disease that is decimating populations and wrecking economies. The United Nations in New York has just wrapped up a special session on HIV/Aids - the first ever devoted specifically to a health problem.
It should have been a high-level, superlative-invoking three days. The issues could not be more serious, and the dramatis personae were top people. There were 26 heads of state here, mostly from African countries. The US secretary of state, Colin Powell, has been batting for the US, and Clare Short, the international development secretary, was here for the UK.
But what a shambles. The state of the building could be a metaphor for the entire conference. It is hard not to see it as a reflection of the true feelings of the north - led by the US - towards the problems afflicting the poor countries of the south.
The UN - that institution which so many of us dreamed of working for in our naive youths - is in fact a shabby labyrinth that the world seems to have passed by. You can't make international calls from the media centre. They have installed computers, but they perch on tall desks so high that you have to crane your neck to see the screen. The chairs are too low, apparently made for a bygone generation with shorter legs and longer bodies. We have to balance the key boards on our laps.
None of this would matter if the place was afire with enthusiasm for the work in hand. Far from it. The atmosphere has been dreary, as if the 3,000-odd ministers, health officials and health workers were dragged here against their will.
Yet there was so much to play for. This year, as the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, said in his opening speech, has been a turning point in the struggle to get the battle against HIV/Aids going. Ironically, it is in part thanks to the pharmaceutical companies. The drug giants misguidedly carried out their threat to take the South African government to court in a bid to block legislation allowing the import of cheap drugs. With a quarter of young adults in the country facing a death sentence from HIV, the spectacle sparked public outrage, and the drug companies backed off. There was dancing in the streets of Pretoria, a rosy glow among the west's liberal-minded, and the birth of hope in the townships and villages of Africa that they might get access to the western drugs that can keep people with HIV/Aids alive.
This was a chance to do great things - to beat back the modern plague. Annan, who made the crusade against Aids his personal priority, called for a global fund of $7bn to $10bn, which many hoped would buy those drugs. But the session, which was meant to put the seal on the new determination with a declaration of global commitment, has been the pin to burst the bubble. One excellency after another has delivered a sombre speech about the scale of the disaster, adding nothing to the sum of human knowledge, while behind the scenes they have bickered about the wording they were supposed to sign up to. The UK and US have stuck doggedly to their line that prevention - education in safe sex and condom use - is the way forward, as if the heartfelt clamour for drugs from the dying had never been made.
Where is the colour, vibrancy and compassion of the massive Aids conference this time last year in Durban? When HIV sufferers in the developing world first started to campaign publicly for medicines; when the rest of the world first saw Nkosi Johnson, the young boy with Aids - now dead - who became a symbol for the disaster; when Judge Edwin Cameron moved everyone with his critique of a world where HIV-positive people such as himself could get drugs, but so many of his fellow South Africans were doomed to an early death?
There's been no sense of what it's really about here at the UN. The liveliest bit was a press conference by activists who shook symbolic medicine bottles and shouted: "Medication for every nation. Pills cost pennies, greed costs lives." And then it was over.
Who knows? If governments move in mysterious ways, then global meetings of government leaders are truly impenetrable. Perhaps something positive will come out of the UN session. But then again, perhaps everyone should have stayed at home and got on with fighting the disease.
