Mega calls for Asia-Africa unity

Fabiola Desy Unidjaja, The Jakarta Post, Bandung

Indonesian President Megawati Soekarnoputri called on Asian and African countries to stand together in the face of new challenges both in the economic and political fields.

Underlining the inability of both continents to compete with the developed countries, Megawati said that cooperation among Asian and African nations could overcome various security and economic problems they were facing.

"When 20 percent of the human race controls 80 percent of the wealth, and 80 percent must live on 20 percent of the wealth, it is very justifiable for us Asians and Africans to unite," the President said in her opening remarks at the ministerial meeting of the Asia Africa Sub-Regional Organizations Conference (AASROC) here on Tuesday.

Quoting the speech her father, founding president Sukarno, delivered during the Asia-Africa Conference in 1955, Megawati called for "the liberation of man from physical, spiritual and intellectual bonds, which have for too long stunted the development of humanity's majority".

Megawati said the two continents were currently struggling against massive debts, the inability to compete on the world market, poverty, disease, food insecurity and environmental degradation.

She criticized globalization and the "cult" of the market economy, which she said had not delivered the promised benefits to poor nations.

Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous country, has been critical of developed countries on various issues. It called for world opposition to the U.S.-led attack on Iraq.

Last week at the opening of Asia-Europe Meeting in Bali, Megawati warned that cooperation between developing and developed countries should be conducted based on mutual respect and parity.

In a similar mood on Tuesday, Megawati pointed out that the domination of powerful countries in both political and economic field had created new forms of "colonialism" and "imperialism" in the world.

"We have to be fully united not only in the political sphere but in the economic and socio-cultural spheres. That means we have to work together to address the problems of peace, and economic and social development that beset the two continents," she said.

Indonesia and South Africa are co-hosting the first ministerial meeting of AASROC, which serves as a preparatory forum for the commemoration of the 1955 Asia-Africa Conference in Bandung in 2005,

The second preparatory meeting of the conference will be in Johannesburg next year.

During the 50th anniversary celebration of the Bandung meeting, the countries are expected to adopt a new strategic partnership on political and economic cooperation.

"The strategic partnership will unite more than a hundred countries, representing four billion of the world's population of six billion, with the world's largest wealth of natural resources," South African foreign affairs minister Nkosazana C. Dlamini Zuma said.

She said that despite the end of the cold war, both continents were facing new economic and political challenges that could be overcome by their own will and measures.

She underlined that for Asia and Africa, multilateralism was the major way to enhance the two continents' capabilities to compete in a world characterized by globalization.

"We have to reactivate the spirit of Bandung, eliminating the negative impacts of the globalization. We need to ensure that we are the architects of our own destiny," the minister said during the opening ceremony.

Some 15 ministers and 19 deputy foreign ministers from both continents are participating in the conference, which is slated to asses various problems that hamper cooperation between them and to find new formats for their relationships.

"For today, the countries are beginning to work together toward a shared destiny, which is also the destiny of the rest of the world: a regime of durable peace and stability, social justice and equitably shared prosperity," Indonesian foreign minister Hassan Wirayuda said his speech.