desktop icons not displaying when root

oel 6.8, using vncserver or exceed when logging in as root the gnome desktop icons don't display, when logging in as any other user the desktop icons display.

tried to copy and past from applications tab, but that didn't work either.... if I look in the Desktop folder I can see all the apps that I tried to copy and paste ?

[root@BANDEGAPP ~]# cd Desktop

[root@BANDEGAPP Desktop]# ls -all

total 48

drwxr-xr-x.  2 root root  4096 Oct 21 22:02 .

dr-xr-x---. 31 root root  4096 Oct 21 21:54 ..

-rw-r--r--.  1 root root    65 Oct 18  2016 .directory

-rwxr-xr-x   1 root root 12150 Sep 12 11:29 gedit-1.desktop

-rwxr-xr-x.  1 root root 12150 Oct 15  2016 gedit.desktop

-rwxr-xr-x   1 root root   433 Oct 21 22:02 gnome-terminal (copy).desktop