The Non Aligned Movement (NAM) summit of leaders gets underway in Venezuelas Margarita Island on Saturday, which will be an occasion for Venezuela to gather support for a global deal to bolster oil prices, Venezuelan Petroleum Minister Eulogio del Pino has said. “We began a discussion on this at the Cartagena Summit in 1995; this discussion must continue and fructify so that NAM may achieve its full potential”, Ansari said.
Advertisement
This is a position that Minister Mumbengegwi reiterated in his address to fellow NAM foreign ministers on Thursday.
India has also called off a planned visit to Mexico by Sushma this month, again indicating to that country that the foreign minister’s health was the reason she will not be able to travel to Mexico City.
Indian Vice President Hamid Ansari is already in Venezuela to attend the summit, during which key issues of concern like terrorism, United Nations reform, climate change and nuclear disarmament are expected to be discussed, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has said in New Delhi.
Venezuela, an OPEC member and home to one of the world’s largest oil reserves, assumed the movement’s rotating presidency from Iran which had hosted the bloc’s summit in 2012. He further said that terror is something which impedes everything. “Today we need to ask whether an organization designed in 1945 with just 51 member states, is really appropriate to serve the needs of an worldwide community that now comprises 193 independent sovereign states facing 21st century challenges to their citizens’ well-being and security”, said Ansari. Whatever the form terror takes, it is terror, it is terrorising civilian populations and therefore if the population is terrorised then it can not devote itself to its normal pursuits, foremost amongst them is development. Turkey has followed NAM developments since 2006 as part of its multi-dimensional foreign policy.
“There was a methodology in 1961”.
Responding to a question on whether there had been a change in India’s foreign policy, the Vice-President said the country’s foreign policy, like domestic policies, is meant to achieve a set of objectives and to determine the best methodology for doing so.
Non-Aligned Movement has a great range of members.
Established in 1961 as a counterweight to the then attempt to create a bipolar world divided between the USA and the now defunct USSR, NAM spearheaded establishment of a new global economic order in which all nations were equal. Any organisation if it does not respond to the requirements of the day loses its relevance. They are anti-national in a fundamental sense: “for they do not believe in the concept of a nation state”. If peace does not prevail then attention gets diverted. “That is the objective for which this gathering is taking place”, he stressed.
“It is always been an article of faith with us that we do not interfere in the affairs of other countries”.
The NAM member states should take steps towards their “collective interests” through “unity” and “mutual cooperation”, he added.
Following the NAM summit, he will head to Havana, where he will hold talks with Fidel Castro and President Raul Castro.
NAM today comprises 53 countries from Africa, 39 from Asia, 26 from Latin America and the Caribbean and two from Europe. “Today we need to ask whether an organisation designed in 1945 with just 51 member states, is really appropriate to serve the needs of an worldwide community that now comprises 193 independent sovereign states facing 21st century challenges to their citizens’ well-being and security”, he said.
Describing sustainable development as the bedrock and the highest aspiration of NAM countries’ efforts, Ansari emphasised on the importance of solidarity that the movement attaches to achieving it.
Advertisement
Elsewhere in the meeting, President Rouhani voiced Iran’s willingness to work with Venezuela on economic and investment projects, calling for activities by a joint economic commission to handle the plans.
