High & low diplomacy

The event marked the largest-ever gathering of global heads of state and government -- more than 150 in all -- bringing long-term allies and enemies alike into close and often unaccustomed proximity.

In such an atmosphere, matters of protocol take on added significance and even the most cursory interaction can provoke national headlines, as when Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf shook hands with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at a reception.

At a later press conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Musharraf was pressed to take reporters through the symbolic pressing of palms in all its banal detail.

"I was standing, and he came ... and he shook hands with me," Musharraf said of Sharon.

"He asked me how I was. I asked him how you are, and that's very good," the president said, prompting Blair to chime in, "Great statesmanship."

Where some traditional rivals chose to break the ice, others opted for gestures of glacial contempt.

The audience for the maiden UN speech by Iran's new President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was notable for the absence of any senior members of the US delegation, which was represented by two diligent, but low-level "note-takers."

With so many leaders taking their turn at the podium in the General Assembly chamber, audience attendance, not to mention concentration, fluctuated wildly.

While prime-time addresses by the likes of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and US President George W. Bush were guaranteed a capacity turnout, the heads of smaller nations were often left practising their oratorical skills on rows of empty seats.

Speeches at such major UN events, where most meaty issues are reserved for sideline meetings, tend towards the dry and repetitive, helped on their way by the professionally neutral tone of the translators who can reduce even the most impassioned presidential delivery to a bland monotone.

But some speakers, especially those on less than friendly terms with the United States, still managed to stand out from the crowd by cranking up the rhetoric and flinging some choice diplomatic barbs.

Seasoned US baiter Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, grabbed attention by branding the host nation a "terrorist state" and suggesting the United Nations be moved out of its New York home.