It sounds like the title of a paperback thriller, but The Belfast Protocol is about to change for ever the perception of the city: from the seat of sectarian strife to the fount of all wisdom on the subject of... lavatories.

Some 350 delegates to the World Toilet Summit began gathering in Belfast Monday. They aim to provide expert advice on the changing face of the smallest room, relief to those in need and the opportunity for a barrage of cheap gags.

Apart from revealing the worst public lavatories in the UK and Ireland, the two-day conference will culminate in the signing of the protocol, a policy document on the way forward for public conveniences, which governments around the world will be urged to endorse.

The Good Friday agreement was supposed to lead to peace and stability in Northern Ireland. The Belfast Protocol not only has the potential to make a greater global splash but may prove easier to implement and offer greater relief.

Raymond Martin, the Northern Ireland Toilet Association director, summed up the challenge ahead: "I don't think nuclear war will get us but I think germs will. We are not being smart about germs and about sanitation. Germs can multiply and mutate so fast and yet the standard of most of these away-from-home toilets is pretty poor," he said.

The programme notes miss no opportunity to labour a pun. They list the highlights of the conference agenda as: "A Seat of Learning," "A Continental Case Study" and "Setting Standards Down Under."

One topic exercising the delegates will be street urination. In an attempt to persuade Saturday night revellers that telephone boxes are solely for making telephone calls, Belfast City Council yesterday unveiled the Urilift, a new public lavatory.

During the day the stainless steel pride of the city will lie in wait beneath the pavement of Shaftesbury Square. But as night falls it will rise hydraulically and majestically, ready for use by up to four people at a time. The summit will also launch the Bog Standard campaign for better school lavatories and host its own awards ceremony for the 2005 Loo of the Year.

There is, of course, a fringe of cynics who will say that no city could lay greater claim than Belfast to be host of the World Toilet Summit.

But let them be silenced by the news that next year the event moves to Moscow. And ponder on the poor old City of Londonderry missing out as usual when its very own Bogside district could have provided the perfect location. At the very least it could have inspired even more jokes.

Source: China Daily