By IPS Correspondents
BOGOTA, May 21 1998 (IPS)

The Non-Aligned Movement’s (NAM) “Message from the Caribbean” issues a call for peace as fundamental for development, and shared responsibility in the fight against drug trafficking.

The foreign ministers and other high-level officials of NAM’s 113 member nations met this week in the northern Colombian city of Cartagena to organise the September summit to be held in Durban, South Africa.

The document signed at the end of the Monday through Wednesday Ministerial Meeting of the NAM Coordination Bureau stresses that the elimination by developing countries “of nuclear arms and other instruments of mass destruction” is key to peace and coexistence.

“Our countries must not fill into the trap of diverting our scarce possibilities for social investment” into such weapons, which “in and of themselves generate the need to be used,” warned NAM chairman Colombian President Ernesto Samper, who will hand the post over to South Africa in September.

In Samper’s view, the members of NAM must become “interlocutors” working towards easing stances of confrontation and distancing the spectre of war, which he said was stimulated by arms manufacturers.

The “Message from the Caribbean” also reflects Colombia’s demands for shared responsibility and a comprehensive approach in the fight against drug trafficking.

Shared responsibility in order for producer countries not to be held exclusively responsible for “a commitment that consumer countries must also assume,” and a comprehensive enforcement approach that focuses on each link of the “diabolical chain” of drug trafficking, Samper underlined at the opening of the ministerial meeting.

Julio Londono, Colombia’s ambassador to the United Nations and the coordinator of this week’s gathering, said the ministers’ declaration on drug trafficking would be submitted to the special UN anti-drugs summit scheduled for June.

The foreign ministers and heads of delegations of the 70 countries comprising the NAM Coordination Bureau also expressed their concern over the advance of “alienating” or dehumanising economic models and unilateral measures adopted by individual countries to apply pressure on others.

The foreign ministers criticised the tendency of some states to “assume the right to assess or certify the conduct of developing countries on a number of issues.”

With respect to the Middle East, the ministers acknowledged the current chair’s efforts before the UN and other international fora to contribute to a peaceful solution that would finally allow Palestinians to enjoy the right to live within safe, properly marked borders.

The meeting urged the government of Israel to comply with UN recommendations such as the withdrawal of its troops from Lebanon.

At the gathering, the last to be held under the current chair, Colombian Foreign Minister Camilo Reyes said it was positive for his country to preside over NAM in order to attain the movement’s solidarity with respect to the fight against drugs.

Colombia’s foreign image suffered when it was “decertified” by the United States in 1996 and 1997 for failing to satisfy Washington with its drug enforcement efforts. Although it was decertified again this year, sanctions were waived.

Reyes said the decertification not only awakened the solidarity of Colombia’s fellow NAM members, but also “sparked a major debate in the United States” regarding the effectiveness of the annual certification process.

Another of Colombia’s achievements at the head of NAM was the “consolidation of dialogue” with the industrialised members of the Group of Eight (G-8) and the European Union, Reyes added. NAM’s message was heard by the G-8, which agreed on a three-year timeframe to cancel 80 percent of the foreign debt of several heavily indebted developing countries.

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