By IPS Correspondents
KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 25 2003 (IPS)

Leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) ended their summit late Tuesday with calls for a multilateral approach to the Iraq crisis and a stop to human rights violations in Palestine, highlighting their concern with two festering issues in the Middle East.

These calls were contained in statements on Iraq and Palestine issued at the close of the 13th summit of the 116-member NAM, which also issued a 375-paragraph declaration.

On Iraq, NAM called for ”the persistent continuation" of attempts "based on multilateral as opposed to unilateral actions", but also called on the Iraqi government to "continue to actively comply with Security Council Resolution 1441" and to remain "engaged in the process".

Earlier in the day, NAM received an invitation from Iraq to send a fact-finding mission there.

Iraqi Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan, in his statement to the summit, invited NAM to send a "ministerial delegation or a high-ranking delegation" to Iraq to look into Baghdad’s cooperation with the U.N. weapon inspectors.

Ramadan told the summit that Iraq was determined to help the inspectors iron out all problems over its alleged weapons of mass destruction. "Iraq is determined to continue its efforts to help with verification of all problems if (the UN) requests details," he said.

At a press conference at the end of the summit, Malaysian Prime Minister and new NAM chairman Mahathir Mohamad said the group – which covers two-thirds of the United Nations – has decided not to accept the invitation at this stage.

"We don’t ask to be convinced, it’s other people who want to be convinced" he said in reply to a journalist’s question about Iraq’s position on weapons inspections.

On Palestine, NAM "strongly condemned the systematic human rights violations and reported war crimes" that have been committed by Israel and said that the main danger to the realisation of Palestinian statehood is continued Jewish settlements, which it called upon Israel to stop.

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, addressing the summit Tuesday through video conference link, warned that his people are "on the precipice of a dangerous abyss" and invited NAM to send a fact-finding mission to Palestine.

Throughout the final day of the summit, developing country leaders continued their pleas to strengthen multilateralism and to oppose in strongest possible terms the move towards unilateral action by the powerful, particularly the United States, in threatening military action against Iraq.

Zimababwe’s President Robert Mugabe got the ball rolling in the morning with a blistering attack on what he called the double standards used by U.S. President George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

"We find ourselves in a new era of unipolarity constituting a portentous juncture in the history of our movement characterised by unilateralism – cum – hegemonism, supported by an interventionist military doctrine that bids the more powerful to impose their will on those who, like many of us, are weak," he said.

”Colonialism now assumes a varied form, and seeks to garner all of us of the Third World as we get globally villagised under false economic pretences," added Mugabe, under fire himself for human rights violations and a repressive rule at home.

Calling Britain a "born-again colonialist", the Zimbabwean leader quoted from Blair’s close policy adviser, Robert Cooper, who argues for a ‘ new liberal imperialism’ that Mugabe said involves making double standards acceptable to a "world of human rights and cosmopolitan values".

Thus, he added, Cooper’s advice includes reverting to the "rougher methods of an earlier era" of force, pre-emptive attacks and deception "when dealing with old fashioned kind of states outside post-modern continent of Europe".

These comments tended to echo Mahathir’s comments in his opening address to the NAM summit Monday. Mugabe said that NAM must "put their money where their mouth is" and establish a permanent secretariat to coordinate its response to the new imperialism onslaught.

But Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar said later that NAM leaders have decided the time was not yet right to set up a permanent secretariat. Poor nations are not in a position to help fund its operations and NAM does not have a charter, like the United Nations, to make it operational.

Cuban President Fidel Castro also echoed Mahathir’s comments when he said that to save human civilisation from disaster, NAM countries must fight the battle "with the support of millions of manual and intellectual workers from the developed nations who are conscious of the catastrophes befalling their people".

He added that "we can do it by sowing ideas, building awareness and mobilising the world public opinion and the American public opinion".

While the NAM summit has strongly condemned war, the small Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan actually called for a war. "Our people need war," declared Bhutan’s Foreign Minister Lyonpo Jogmi Y.Thinley. He was not asking for guns and missiles to be fired, but for NAM to rid its poorest members of the same despair and hopelessness that war brings.

"I speak of the need to eradicate poverty," he added. "It deserves the highest place on the international agenda of our movement, which includes among its members the poorest countries in the world".

Indeed, some small countries said all the attention on war and Iraq could sideline other development concerns.

Jose Ramos Horta, foreign minister of newest NAM member East Timor, told IPS that while the situation with Iraq poses grave dangers to the world and the movement, "the negative point is that countries of the North will now pay less attention" to these problems.

Martin Khor, director of the Malaysia-based Third World Network, is not surprised that the NAM summit has been dominated by the Iraqi situation.

"NAM has traditionally dealt with political issues such as decolonisation and today it is important for NAM to take up the crisis in international relations" he said. "This is something the G-77 (Group of 77 developing countries at the United Nations) can’t do. It is the territory of NAM".

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