For Mr Boutros-Ghali, however, the prospect of challenging China – a permanent Security Council member – will be far from appealing. For China, attracting the women’s conference to Peking was a significant step out of the diplomatic wilderness it has been in since the Tiananmen clampdown To lose it would mean deep humilation. The Chinese government seems to have belatedly woken up to the reality of what 25,000 NGO women in central Peking could mean. Several groups have specific agendas, embracing human rights, abortion, prostitutes’ rights, Tibet, and lesbianism.The trip by Li Peng, the Prime Minister, to Copenhagen in March for the UN Social and Development Conference, where he saw NGO groups in action on the streets, appears to have been the final straw.The dispute is extremely delicate for both sides. It was also within easy reach of the venue for the UN World Conference on Women.Then a month ago, on 4 April, the NGO Forum in New York received a fax from its Chinese counterpart announcing that the site for the forum had been switched, citing “structural problems”, but no one believes that.

I think they are afraid of the strength of the NGO community, because we are independent, free-thinking and free-wheeling,” she said.Until a month ago, the NGO Forum on Women was due to be held at a central Peking stadium and gymnasium, a huge compound which would have provided a single site for the estimated 200 activities a day. “In recent years, the NGOs and the governments have had a terrific partnership at these meetings and then, at the last minute, the Chinese say they are changing the site. “We have to stand very firmly and not take the dregs that the Chinese are offering.” Bella Abzug, a veteran pioneer of women’s rights in the US and former member of Congress, said the NGOs intended to fight China until a settlement was reached. The move is seen by many as a ploy to keep activists away from the main action.
“We just cannot take it,” said Joan Ross Frankson of the International Women’s Tribune Center. There is fury among non-governmental organisations (NGOs) which plan to attend the gathering, over an 11th-hour decision by China to accommodate their forum in a dusty tourist centre at Huairou, 54km from the site of the official conference in central Peking. CHINA is used to doing diplomatic battle with foreign states, but it may have met its match with a different kind of foreign power – angry women activists around the world.

They are exerting strong pressure on the UN Secretary-General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, to force China to change its arrangements for the World Conference on Women in Peking this September or face the prospect that the event might go to another country. When a second breakfast invite arrived earlier this year, public support for Ms Bedi was so great her superiors had to let her go to Washington.Friends of Ms Bedi said that when Sobhraj let it slip that he was writing an admiring biography of her on an electric typewriter – banned in Indian prisons – her bosses at last had the excuse to banish the high-profile warden to an obscure job.. An invitation to join the Clintons for a talk on her prison reforms was refused by her bosses. (Not, perhaps, by accident; in Tihar he will avoid being sent to Thailand, where he would face the death penalty, until a 20-year statute of limitations on the Thai arrest warrant runs out in 1996.)”I trembled when I first entered Tihar two years ago,” Ms Bedi said. Instead of hiring more armed guards with guns, she had swamis teach meditation courses in which more than a thousand prisoners at a time would sit contemplating something other than brawling.

She also weeded out corrupt wardens, shovelled through the mountain of paperwork, speeding up trial times, and allowed volunteers into Tihar to teach the inmates how to read.Her downfall began when her superiors, among them New Delhi’s Lieutenant- Governor, Prasanbhai Dave, grew envious of her glory. The backlog of paperwork was so bad that dozens of prisoners languished for decades in prison without being brought to trial.Tihar’s most notorious inmate, Sobhraj – who is wanted in Thailand for a number of self-confessed sadistic murders of Western backpackers – staged a brazen escape from the high-security wing with six other inmates by knocking out the guards with doped sweets He was recaptured. And they have finally won.”Even her adversaries – and there are many, for Ms Bedi unashamedly courts publicity – admit that Tihar is no longer the sink of depravity it was. Before she took over, gangs terrorised inmates and, with the connivance of corrupt guards, smuggled in liquor and drugs, and prostitutes from the women’s wing. “There are a lot of vested interests, within the jail and outside There are people who are against the reforms.