Poor nations 'must unite to reform UN'

Poor nations 'must unite to reform UN'

Reuters Durban, South Africa

Developing countries must band together to force the powerful West to help tackle their problems from poverty to reform of the United Nations, South African President Thabo Mbeki said on Thursday.

Mbeki told foreign ministers from the 115-member Non-Aligned Movement, including Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda, that poor countries had shown they could make the West stand and take note by their united actions on the global trade arena and it was time to consolidate those gains.

He was referring to the collapse of global trade talks in Cancun, Mexico, when poor nations refused to agree to compromises they said hurt their people and interests.

Mbeki said the biggest challenges faced by developing nations were poverty and underdevelopment, peace, security and terrorism, and the restructuring of global power centers which he said was key to growing developing countries.

"The manner in which global power is exercised impacts on the things that we seek to do," Mbeki told the ministers.

"The transformation of the United Nations has taken far too long. The other multilateral institutions like the Bretton Woods institutions (World Bank and International Monetary Fund) and the World Trade Organization also need to be transformed to meet the needs of our people," he said.

"It is fundamentally in our interest that there must be a restructuring of these institutions."

The Non-Aligned Movement was formed in 1961 as a third way between the Cold War rivalry of the Western and Communist blocs. It is staking new diplomatic territory for itself by pressing for causes from debt relief to fighting HIV/AIDS.

Mbeki and foreign ministers meeting in the South African port city of Durban reiterated support for the UN as the forum for agreeing global policy on the U.S.-led "war on terror".

Mbeki said it was not acceptable that a "few countries" decided the future of the Middle East and other countries without consulting those affected by the decisions.

"We cannot surrender the fate of the Palestinian people to a selected few as if the rest of us had nothing to contribute to the resolution of that problem," Mbeki said.

"The question of Iraq, and the question of Haiti are of the same kind. The question is how do we bring the weight of the Movement to weigh on resolving those problems," he said. -- Reuters