***Pakistan, Zimbabwe and Fiji presented the Commonwealth with tough choices in 2001. Ambitions to move its 54 members along the road to democracy and rights were being frustrated a country suspended from membership was suddenly centre of the world stage. For the first time the biennial summit had to be postponed. Gemini News Service looks at the Commonwealth's difficult year.***

THE dramatic events that flowed from 11 September caught the Commonwealth with its pants down. As the year ends it has yet to pull them up above its knees.

One immediate embarrassment was the position of Pakistan.

Its president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, is the only military leader left in the 54 member Commonwealth. In 1999 he broke its rules by seizing power from the democratically elected government of Nawaz Sharif Consequently, Pakistan was suspended and barred from all official Commonwealth meetings.

Last June Musharraf elevated himself from chief executive to president. He was condemned for doing so by the Commonwealth and its secretary-general Don McKinnon, who remanded Musharraf that the Commonwealth had given Pakistan till October two years after his coup to return to civilian rule.

Musharraf said he could not achieved this till 2003. In August, McKinnon flew to Islamabad to discuss Musharraf's "roadmap" to democracy.

Just a month later, Musharraf was centre stage internationally, alongside the Western alliance in the so-called war against terrorism, wooed by United States President George Bush, visited by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and regaled with offers of aid from those who had earlier imposed sanctions on him.

When the World Trade Centre in New York was destroyed by a terrorist attack the Commonwealth was within 25 days of holding its biennial summit the Commonwealth Heads of Government (CHOGM), in Australia.

For a while it looked as if the Commonwealth meeting might find itself providing the first international platform after 1 1 September from which leaders could sound off about what was happening to the world.

It was not to be. One leaders another said they could not leave their country to attend. CHOGM was postponed till March 2002 and the rest was silence.

The Commonwealth's 1.7 billion people include just about all races and creeds, of which about 450 million are Muslim, yet no statement on terrorism was made until 25 October more than six weeks after the New York attack.

Ethnic and racial diversity at every social and economic level is seen as one of the features that makes the Commonwealth such a valuable body with potentially powerful influence and support for the advance of global harmony.

Its members across the world include large countries like India, where live almost as many Muslims as the entire population of Pakistan, and small states like Trinidad and Tobago, whose people of African and Indian descent live alongside those of European, Latin American and Chinese origin.

A People's Festival, planned by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to take place alongside the summit, went ahead in Brisbane, Australia. Conferences, seminars, workshops, dance, song and drama made up a brave show.

Nonetheless, many NGOs were angry and felt the politicians had sold the Commonwealth short by not turning up.

Whether CHOGM could have gone head, perhaps with the aid of video conferencing and with some real political vision and imagination, will long be argued about. Realistically, calling it off was probably inevitable.

In the history of these longest running of international summits tracing back to 1885 this was the first postponement.

The Pakistan problem and summit postponement were not the only setbacks for the Commonwealth in 2001. Another was the steadily worsening situation in Zimbabwe.

It was not in doubt by mid-year that the violent takeover of farmland, intimidation of the press, and breakdown of law and order contravened the principles of good governance and human rights set down in the Commonwealth's 1991 Declaration and further rules of good behaviour agreed at its Auckland summit in 1995.

Yet its watchdog body the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) of eight foreign minister was not fully empowered to take up the Zimbabwe issue. Unlike Musharraf, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe was a democratically elected leader, making direct intervention difficult.

When CMAG tried to send three ministers, Mugabe refused to let them in.

Eventually, President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria convened a meeting in Abuja of nine Commonwealth minister, including Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge of Zimbabwe. A deal was agreed under which Zimbabwe undertook to end the violence and proceed with land reform in an orderly manner, in exchange for financial help from Britain and the United Nations.

The deal changed nothing. The situation on the ground actually worsened and when seven Commonwealth minister went to Zimbabwe in October they were subjected to a verbal tirade from Mugabe, and went away empty-handed. The same thing happened to European Union commissioners.

This was the same president who in 1991 had president over the summit that adopted the Commonwealth principles.

Other problems on the road to good governance and democracy in the Commonwealth persisted. Elections in August in the Fiji Islands, which had also been suspended from the Commonwealth following the coup by businessman George Speight in 2000, returned the caretaker Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase. But he proceeded to form a government without Fijian Indian participation, arguably violating the constitution. The matter went to the courts and this delayed Fiji's return to full membership.

But the year was not without its plusses. In January power in Ghana was peacefully transferred, after a well-run election, to the opposition leader John Kufuor. The 20-year-rule of Flight -Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings, who had first come to power by coup, was at an end.

Other plusses included Commonwealth backup for the UN effort to restore peace in Sierra Leone with strong British military involvement; abolition of a critical decree inhibiting political activity in The Gambia; and victory in a battle with the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development over tax havens led to its backdown on new tax procedures on small states.

At year's end though, the Commonwealth was still in a fix over Pakistan. The fact that Musharraf had turned out to be a more equable military leader than most did not justify his seizure of power by coup or mean that the Commonwealth had been wrong to suspend Pakistan.

Its record on ending military and one-party rule since 1991 was sound and had set something of a model to other international organisations. A decade earlier there had been nine military and one-party governments in the Commonwealth. Today, almost all are multi-party and Pakistan is the only military regime.

More worrying for the Commonwealth by the end of 2001 was that its international relevance in the 21st century was being called into question as never before.

A draft report by a group of 10 heads of government on the future role of the Commonwealth, chaired by President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, was leaked before it was due to be presented in Brisbane. It was a deeply disappointing document to those who read it.

As a product of two years' work, the findings of what had been dubbed a High Level Review seemed to contain no new ideas or a broad vision for the future. It had been hoped that the five months' grace could be used to improve the document and inject fresh thinking in the light of world events. But little change to the draft seems likely.

CHOGM 2002 is going to be a very different affair from the one that was to have taken place three months ago. It will be held not in Brisbane but in Coolum, a resort along Australia's gold Coast. The leaders and their officials will be tucked away alone for three days, turning the meeting into a lengthy retreat.

This could be to the Commonwealth's advantage, giving the leaders time free of distractions other than swimming and golf to reflect on the future of the organisation and to come up with the big ideas that are lacking from the report .

Derek Ingram, founder editor of Gemini News Service, has been a commentator on Commonwealth affairs for four decades.