Countries unite against war
By Kimina Lyall, southeast Asia correspondent
February 24, 2003
CALL it a gathering of the bad and the worst. Attendees at tomorrow's Non-Aligned Movement Summit in Kuala Lumpur include a rollcall of the world's great pariahs.
Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe will be there ? Malaysia being one of the few countries to offer warm welcomes to men who have undeniably plunged prosperous countries into economic ruin ? joining key representatives of the US's "axis of evil".
Iran's supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ali Hoseini Khameini, is the most senior of the ill-fated three to arrive, and Iraq is represented by Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan ? along with a truckload of documents he says will convince the 114 members of his country's innocence in the hunt for weapons of mass destruction.
North Korea's Kim Yong-nam, the president of the People's Assembly, rounds out the troika. Already, he has thrown the summit into its expected controversies, by demanding ? apparently unsuccessfully ? that the summit's declaration call on the US to cease its aggression towards North Korea.
Meanwhile, the leaders of the world's two fragile nuclear adversaries, Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf and India's Atal Bihari Vajpayee, will probably keep their distance from each other after India called for the resolution to stand against "state-sponsored terrorism", in a clear reference to Pakistan and disputed Kashmir.
Of course, of the movement's 114 members ? set to increase to 116 by tomorrow ? there are many more mild-mannered leaders also present. East Timor's Xanana Gusmao and Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai will represent potential alternatives to unpopular regimes.
The gathering is presided over by a slightly less iron-fisted despot, Malaysia's Mahathir Mohammad but, even with such a roll of heavy-hitters, there isn't much chance it will actually achieve anything.
The problem is the non-aligned movement, which was launched in 1955 as a "third way" grouping against the Cold War superpowers, in recent years represents a group of people who are largely not aligned with each other or even, in many cases, with their own citizens.
Now it seems that anti-American sentiment will form the only basis for some unity in the grouping, which is almost entirely made up of developing nations in Africa, the Middle-East, Asia and South America.
"NAM?" asks Malaysian political scientist Professor P. Ramasamy. "I call it the NUMB . . . it is a non-aligned non-movement. Mahathir is trying to revive a movement that is irrelevant."
In a sign that he is right, the only surviving founder of the movement, Cambodia's King Norodom Sihanouk ? who was present during the NAM's planning in 1955 in Bandung, Indonesia and at its first meeting, in Belgrade in 1961 hosted by Yugoslav President Tito ? is one of many heads of state who has decided to stay home. |
