The Waldorf-Astoria hotel on Park Avenue in New York ought to be a tempting target to gatecrash this weekend if you happen to be a militant opponent of corporate globalisation.

The Waldorf is playing host to the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, which gathers more than 2000 of the world's most influential corporate chiefs, statesmen, media moguls, and academic brains for a weekend of plotting and schmoozing.

Day of action Saturday, February 2, Waldorf-Astoria 11:00-12:00

The decision of the forum to switch from its traditional venue in the picturesque Swiss ski resort of Davos to midtown Manhattan has encouraged opponents of globalisation to try to make this year's annual meeting the most raucous yet.

The opposition to Davos is organised into two main activities: street level action and alternative conferences.

Activists on the street view the Waldorf gathering as "essentially a multi-million-dollar cocktail party" and are promising to heckle delegates at every opportunity and to engage in "spontaneous direct action" - interpreted by the New York Police Department as a thinly veiled invitation to cause mayhem.

New York's finest have put thousands of officers on standby ready for a massive security mobilisation involving the FBI and the Secret Service dubbed "Operation Decorum at the Forum".

Mainstream lobby groups are taking a different tack and aim to play the dual role of alternative policy advocates and public watchdogs exposing the discrepancies between the forum's slogan: "committed to improving the state of the world" and the track record of some participants.

The Public Eye on Davos, a coalition of groups like Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and Amnesty International, is hosting one of the many parallel conferences and is proposing the start of negotiations for a global agreement on corporate accountability.

Tony Juniper, who has been invited to the Waldorf as director designate of Friends of the Earth, will be slipping a letter about the proposal into the palms of the 1,200 corporate delegates at the meeting.

The letter (click here to read in full) urges delegates to support a call on governments to begin negotiating this summer at the United Nations summit on development in Johannesburg a "legally binding international framework on corporate accountability and liability".

The letter proposes a set of citizen rights and corporate duties and gives delegates until April to respond before the results of the campaign are announced.

Shashi Tharoor, a UN director who sits on the forum's global governance task force, said: "We at the UN remain committed to the secretary-general's global compact - which is not a binding agreement - but requires corporations who sign up to it to honour its principles."

"A binding agreement strikes me as being less realistic in the sense that companies are quite loathe to be treated as if they are governments," he said.

Mr Tharoor would not be drawn on whether a binding agreement was the natural next step: "I think these things have to evolve organically."

Jose Maria Figueres, manging director of the World Economic Forum and former president of Costa Rica, said that he was not in a position to provide an "institutional view" of the proposal.

"Nevertheless, we agree that the fundamental issue [the] proposal raises - how best to advance global corporate citizenship - is a critically important one on which we wish to encourage discussion and action," he said.

The request for support from the protesters is a double-edged sword. While the involvement of the WEF has been the key ingredient in launching important international agreements, such as the Global Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), delegates who do not respond to requests for help can expect to be turned into targets by lobby groups.

Craig Bennet, a spokesperson for the Public Eye, thinks the policy critique offered by opponents of corporate globalisation is in line for some media attention after clashes between protesters and police dominated coverage of recent international meetings in Genoa, Quebec, Washington and Seattle.

Mr Bennet says sensitivity to the mood in New York following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center should serve to deter street activists from crossing the line into violence.

Another World is Possible, one of the groups organising street demonstrations this Saturday, says police restraint is the key to preventing the protests from turning violent.

The group has organised samba dancing classes and puppet shows and activists travelling to the city say they are aiming for a carnival atmosphere.

But their intentions are open to question given the virtual tour of the Waldorf's interior offered on their website, should any protestor be lucky enough to get inside the building. The tour of the Waldorf's luxury suites and Louis XVI banquet hall may, of course, simply be to remind protesters of what they are missing.

The website also provides a message board for budget-conscious travellers seeking a more basic kind of accommodation for the weekend, including a "nice carpeted living room for sleeping bags".

The offers are a nice touch of reassurance to out-of-town activists that when the tiring business of samba dancing and standing toe-to-toe with the NYPD is done, they can, at the very least, count on a nice piece of carpet to lay down on.

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