Columbia looks to hold NAM's next chairmanship

By Oei Eng Goan

CAIRO (JP): Columbia would seem to be the most favorable candidate to lead the 111 member countries of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), replacing Indonesia which holds the chairmanship until September 1995.

Nana Sutresna, chief of the Indonesian delegate to the 11th conference of NAM's foreign ministers, said that Columbia appeared to be the strongest candidate to hold the Movement's chairmanship following Nicaragua's withdrawal from the candidacy.

Under the consensus of member countries which comprise nations in Asia, Africa, a small part of Europe and Latin America, NAM's chair is held on a rotating basis and the forthcoming chairmanship should be one from Latin America.

"It is the task of the 11th conference of NAM's foreign ministers to decide which country will chair the Movement to replace Indonesia in 1995. The only candidate from Latin America seems to be Columbia after Nicaragua and Chile withdrew their candidacies," Nana told a group of Indonesian journalists.

Informed sources told The Jakarta Post yesterday that many member countries had supported Columbia's candidacy for the chairmanship, including those of Latin America such as Cuba, Venezuela, Chile and Nicaragua.

The venue and chair of the forthcoming, 11th NAM summit is expected to be announced later today, during the closing ceremony of the four-day conference which started on Tuesday.

Columbia is likely to declare its official acceptance of the chairmanship, pending the results of the run-up to general elections currently being carried out by the Bogota government, the sources said.

When this happens, the sources added, the official naming of Columbia as NAM's next leader will be made later this year during the ministerial meeting at the Movement's Coordinating Bureau in New York.

Egypt's Foreign Minister Amr Moussa, who chairs the current conference, told journalists after the conclusion of the second plenary session on Wednesday that only Latin American countries will be nominated for NAM's next chairmanship.

The only time that NAM's summit was held in Latin America was in the Cuban capital of Havana in 1979, since the establishment of the Movement in 1961.

Delegates to the Cairo conference yesterday enjoyed a sight- seeing tour of several historical sites in and around the Egyptian capital. However, a number of officials continued to work to finalize the draft document of the meeting.

But plenary sessions on Wednesday had to be extended until late in the evening as some member countries from Africa proposed that strategic changes be made in the Movement's role, particularly in handling disputes among member states and boosting mechanisms for cooperation, said an Indonesian delegation member who asked to remain anonymous.

"But the proposals were strongly rejected by most other members on the grounds that NAM is just a non-formal organization of developing countries and that any changes made could be a setback to the Movement's achievement thus far," he added.

In an interview with The Jakarta Post during the first day of the conference, Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati said that he saw no reason why changes should be made in NAM, stressing that "We (NAM) should not destroy what we have built during the past 30 years, and that Movement's trend under Indonesian chairmanship should be preserved.

Other topics discussed during Wednesday's meetings were disarmament, world security and double standard policies applied by developed nations to developing countries, international economic cooperation and social development and environment.