NAM to boost its role globally
By Oei Eng Goan
CAIRO (JP): Foreign ministers of Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) member countries began their meeting here yesterday by accepting South Africa as a new member and calling to further enhance NAM's global role to dynamically represent the interests of developing nations.
The 11th conference of NAM foreign ministers was officially opened following remarks by Nana Sutresna, in his capacity as chief delegate of Indonesia, the current NAM chairman, and an address by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
In his address delivered in Arabic, President Mubarak reminded that the chief goal of the Movement is to represent the interests of all its members and that NAM needs to cooperate dynamically with the Group of Seven industrialized nations.
Saying that NAM's ideals are to "achieve peaceful cooperation with the international community," Mubarak added that differences among member countries should be ironed out through peaceful means and that "NAM should further strengthen its cooperation in a realistic and comprehensive way, covering political, economic and cultural relations."
Nana, who serves as head executive assistant to the NAM chairman, President Soeharto of Indonesia, told participants of the meeting yesterday about NAM's implementation and active coordination in the wake of its 1992 summit in Jakarta.
He said that although NAM welcomes the peace accord between Israel and Palestine, the Movement should nevertheless seek that international observers be deployed to protect Palestinians throughout the West Bank.
"While it is too early to speculate on how the Gaza-Jericho agreement will be faithfully implemented by Israel, the Palestinians can be assured of NAM's full support in their continuing struggle to establish an independent state," Nana added.
He also said that NAM is deeply concerned over the tragic situation in Bosnia and called on member countries to consider new mechanisms for negotiations among the conflicting parties, including convening "an appropriately-structured international conference."
The four-day ministerial meeting, being held at the Cairo International Conference Center, was attended by more than 85 foreign ministers and scores of delegations from NAM member countries.
Informed sources told The Jakarta Post that other issues which will be discussed at the meeting include the tragic events which have caused the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives in Rwanda, the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula as well as the civil war in Yemen.
Yesterday's opening ceremony was held amid tight security, with hundreds of police officers and security troops guarding the venue. Truckloads of military personnel armed with rifles and machine guns were positioned in strategic spots around the conference hall.
The meeting is also expected to announce the country that will host the NAM summit meeting scheduled for next year. The summit, designed for the heads of state or government of NAM member countries is held every three years.
Under NAM's consensus, a member country which hosts the summit automatically chairs the movement for the next three years. Indonesia, which hosted the 10th NAM summit in September 1992, will thus chair the organization until September 1995.
Many NAM members agree that the NAM chair should come from a Latin American country, with Colombia seemingly the favorite to be chosen as the venue for NAM's 11th Summit.
In an interview with the Post and Indonesia's Antara news agency, Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati said it is his country's hope that the host of the next NAM summit will be a Latin American country since it is that region's turn to chair the Movement.
Asked for his opinion on NAM's position in the international political arena, he replied: "We do believe that the position of the Non-Aligned Movement should be strengthened and the most important job for this conference is to identify the venue for the forthcoming summit. And also the continuation of the dialogs among the members about the nature of the Movement."
He added that NAM should preserve the trend which Indonesia, as chairman of the Movement, had started and that strategic changes in the organization could detract from what has already been achieved.
"There are proposals which have come from member countries, specifically Egypt, about the strategic changes in the Non- Aligned Movement. But we think that we should not destroy what we have built during the last 30 years. And now we can see that, frankly speaking, under the chairmanship of Indonesia, the position of the Movement has become stronger than before. So we have to preserve this trend. We do hope that the next Summit will be held in Latin America," he said.
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