Richard Branson forms a band of 'Elders' with Mandela, Carter, Tutu and others

Melding serious statesmanship and a large slug of audacity, the former South African president Nelson Mandela and a clutch of world-famous figures plan to announce on Wednesday a private alliance to launch diplomatic assaults on the globe's most intractable problems.

The alliance, to be unveiled on Wednesday during events marking Mandela's 89th birthday, is to be called "The Elders." Among others, it includes the retired Anglican archbishop Desmond Tutu; Jimmy Carter, the former U.S. president; the retired United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan, and Mary Robinson, the human-rights activist and former president of Ireland.

Many, including Mandela, have been early and harsh critics of President George W. Bush and American foreign policy, particularly toward Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The group's members and backers insisted in interviews, however, that they are guided neither by ideology nor by geopolitical bent.

Mandela states in remarks prepared for Wednesday that the fact that none of The Elders holds public office allows them to work for the common good, not for outside interests.

"This group can speak freely and boldly, working both publicly and behind the scenes on whatever actions need to be taken," the remarks state. "Together we will work to support courage where there is fear, foster agreement where there is conflict, and inspire hope where there is despair."

Whether governments that become the objects of The Elders' freelance diplomacy will agree remains to be seen. One of the group's founders and principal sponsors, the British tycoon Sir Richard Branson, said that those leaders whom he had briefed - including Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain and the South African president, Thabo Mbeki - "very much support the initiative."

"There will always be skeptics of any positive initiatives, but these are people giving up their time for nothing," he said of The Elders. "Most individuals in the world would welcome a group of people who are above ego, who, in the last 12 or 15 years of their lives, are above partisan politics."

Precisely what problems The Elders will tackle is unclear; none have yet been selected.

A spokeswoman said the group would jointly decide where to step in, based in part on the seriousness of an issue and their ability to contribute to a solution.

In interviews, Branson and Carter offered two quite different hypothetical situations: The Elders might be able to help resolve regional crises like the wave of guerrilla fighting and kidnapping in Nigeria's oil-rich Niger River delta, Branson suggested.

For his part, Carter said the group might address problems like the waste and lack of coordination among aid organizations providing health care in developing nations. "The Elders won't get involved in delivering bed nets for malaria prevention," he said. "The issue is to fill vacuums - to address major issues that aren't being adequately addressed."

If the concept and the name seem a bit outsized - a diplomatic league of superheroes, one might say - that may stem from their ties to Branson, who rarely does anything in a small way.

In a telephone interview, Branson said that he began thinking about a the notion in 2003, after he sought to persuade Mandela and Annan to travel to Baghdad to ask Saddam Hussein to relinquish power in Iraq. The two agreed, but war broke out before arrangements were completed.

Later, after working on a concert for one of Mandela's charities, Branson flew home with Peter Gabriel, the British rock musician and human-rights activist. "I was talking about the need for a group of global elders to be there to rally around in times of conflict," he said, "and Peter said he'd had a similar idea, but using the global Internet to help elders relate to the world community."

Thus was born The Elders, named after the preeminence of elders in African village societies. Over the last year or so, Branson held a series of meetings at his Caribbean base, Necker Island, at which potential members and backers were recruited to the cause and asked to contribute their own ideas.

Carter said the meetings were a tightly held secret. "Before we went I didn't know what the meeting was all about," he said. "I went because of Sir Richard. We'd talked earlier about the possibility of a biofuels plant in my town, Plains."

Branson and Gabriel contributed funds to begin the project. Asked how much it would cost, Branson replied, "Obviously, it's not cheap." But enough donors have given money to finance The Elders' first four years of work, he said, and he anticipates that raising still more will not be difficult.