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| Kathmandu, Monday February 24, 2003 Falgun 12, 2059. |
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Changing NAM
The non-aligned
movement (NAM) summit meeting gets underway in Malaysia today with the dark shadows of war
over Iraq looming large in the air. And fittingly, the Iraq problem is expected to
dominate the NAM proceedings even though it will be business as usual otherwise. The
non-aligned movement has always been characterized by a high sense of morality when it
comes to preaching to the superpowers – principally the then Soviet Union and the
United States. It is a different matter that most of the non-aligned countries, especially
those that carry a huge military clout, do not practise what they preach. The movement was
basically an answer to the Cold War that prevailed between western countries and the
countries that aligned themselves with the Soviet Bloc. With the Cold War now a bad dream
of the past, the validity of NAM has to be justified time and time. It is not enough doing
so once because of the changing context of the world politics. Academics are divided at
this juncture over the validity of the movement but the members of the non-aligned
movement see no harm in holding a conclave of their top leaders every three years or so.
The coming together of top leaders no doubt is a positive event in any non-aligned summit
as it enables, among others, for the countries that are at loggerheads against each other
to sort out, or to make a pretence of sorting out, their problems. But the drawback of
NAM, much like that of SAARC, is that mutual differences are not aired and willing
countries are not formally encouraged to sort out problems between member states. The
Indo-Pakistan problem that threatens from time to time to engulf the South Asian region is
never mentioned in NAM or SAARC summits. Although there are other such problems, they may
not be of the same magnitude.
Prime Minister Lokendra
Bahadur Chand is leading the Nepalese delegation to the Malaysia meeting. But as in the
past, Nepal will probably have nothing new to afford the meeting except to show its usual
low profile presence. But there are still many areas in which the nations belonging to the
non-aligned club can help each other. The economic plight of many countries, especially
those hit hard by terrorism and terrorism-like conflict, is an area in which the movement
can focus its attention. The haste made by many countries to join the World Trade
Organisation (WTO) is no doubt the need of the day but this also brings some major
responsibilities which the poorest among the non-aligned countries will find hard to
discharge. Since Nepal is a poor country, sending even its own prime minister and other
members of the delegation to such meetings put quite a burden on the exchequer unless the
country can be assured that it will benefit either politically or economically in the
short run or in the future by such participation. In this age of transparency, no country
can waste tax payers’ money in useless carnivals. This is why non-aligned countries
must come to terms with the changing time and be able to project a new image of NAM. |
