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An article from Antara News
Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla said member countries of the Non-Alligned Movement (NAM) must be able and ready to meet various challenges in the 21st century. “I need to affirm that there has been an urgent need for NAM to conduct internal reform. Reform is needed so that NAM could face the challenges in the 21st century,” he said according to a press statement from the foreign ministry received here on Sunday.
Click on photo to enlarge: (L-R, first row) President of El Salvador Salvador Sanchez Ceren, President of Ecuador Rafael Correa, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, the President of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, President of Bolivia Evo Morales and the President of the Supreme People’s Assembly of North Korea Kim Yong Nam during a photo call of leaders and delegates of the countries participating in the Non-Aligned Movement Summit in Margarita, Venezuela, 17 September 2016. EPA/MIGUEL GUTIERREZ
He said the main challenges being faced by NAM at present is not a cold war but inequality and development gap between NAM member countries and internal conflict as well as conflict among NAM member countries.
To face the challenges the Indonesian vice president said NAM members need to reaffirm the principles and basic values of NAM. He also said NAM must pay attention to current realities.
“The principles and basic values of NAM are still very relevant and if they are implemented correctly they will make NAM successful in facing various challenges in the 21st century and its visions,” he said.
Kalla said in the future NAM must focus on its cooperation programs.
He said multi-lateral cooperation must remain NAMs focus and in view of that improvement of NAMs contribution in the UN especially in promoting settlement of conflicts peacefully must be increased.
In connection with that the vice president said Indonesia plans to bid for non-permanent membership in the UN Security Council for the period of 2019-2020.
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Secondly, he said, NAM must strengthen its global culture of peace especially through inter-civilization dialogs.
Thirdly, he said, NAM members must strengthen good governance and democracy that could help efforts to minimize terrorism, radicalism and extremism potential.
Fourthly, he said, NAM must increase development cooperation especially through South-South cooperation and he considered it very important to meet the 2030 development agenda.
Besides presenting cooperation that NAM must focus on, the Indonesian vice president said NAMs 120 member countries represent 60 percent of the UN members, and so have a big bargaining power.
“This should help NAM make a success in meeting its visions and contributing to international efforts to overcome global challengers,” he said.
Vice President Jusuf Kalla alos said NAM still had an obligation that it has to pay which is supporting Palestine to get its independence.
In connection with that he again called on NAM members to give full support to Palestinian independence including through Israel-Palestine peace process to materialize the two-state solution.
The 17th NAM summit from September 13-18 on the island of Margarita, Venezuela, carried a theme of “Peace, Sovereignty and Solidarity for Development.
A number of heads of state and governments of member countries attended the meeting.(*)
[Editor’s note: Heads of state included Salvador’s President Salvador Sanchez Ceren, Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Bolivia’s President Evo Morales, North Korea’s nominal head of state Kim Yong Nam, Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe, and Cuba’s Raúl Castro, most of whom are in the accompanying photo. Most media coverage of this event was very negative, saying that it was a foreign policy disaster for Venezuela president Maduro, and this is one of the few very reports that gave some of the content of the discussions.]
After the above article was posted, a more complete description of the contents of the Non-aligned summit was published here by the government of South Africa.
There are also more recent articles in Spanish here and here.