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News from Durban is that, finally, member countries of the non-aligned movement (NAM) are going to tone down their favourite anti-west rhetoric and focus on economic issues. This change in focus was long overdue; nevertheless, it is to be welcomed. For long, the relevance of NAM in the post-cold War era was being debated outside the NAM forum, but the issue was hardly taken seriously within NAM itself. The political hang-ups, however, do not seem to have receded as yet. South Africa has sought to expand NAM's role to include conflict resolution, thereby making third-party intervention inevitable. India has rightly objected to this, as it feels this will give Pakistan another opportunity to internationalise the Kashmir issue.
NAM needs to change its basic philosophy if it has to survive and move towards economic cohesiveness. Its birth had its origins in countering the US-Soviet Union threat to divide the world into a bi-polar one. Though the context and times have changed, NAM hasn't. The summit has becomemore of a platform for Third World premiers to render cliched speeches and give vent to anti-West ideas.
The nation-state concept, restricted to geographical boundaries, is fast losing ground, and is getting replaced by globalisation, where physical distances are being more than made up by technological advances. So, NAM must focus more on enhancing south-south cooperation based on sound economic principles. Much of the Third World's economic problems still remain, even decades after having liberated themselves from colonialism. The forum needs to focus on loosening trade barriers amongst themselves and act in unison to fight western capital might and economic coercion. The prosperity of these nations does not depend only on how much FDI comes from the developed world, but more on sharing each other's resources and talent.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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