OWN CORRESPONDENT, Durban | Friday 10.00pm.
FIFTY-THREE heads of state, five deputy presidents or prime ministers and 102 foreign ministers will be attending the Non-Aligned Movement summit which begins in Durban on Saturday. A further 12 foreign ministers will participate as observers, while up to 3000 delegates and several hundred media representatives will also attend.
Issues that will be dealt with include sustainable development, the restructuring of the United Nations, global terrorism, drug trafficking and Third World debt. The summit will also discuss the recent developments which have plunged the Democratic Republic of Congo into chaos. DRC president Laurent Kabila has confirmed that he will attend.
Other high-profile arrivals include Algerian president Liamine Zeroual, Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Jordan’s King Hussein, Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohamed, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Iran’s president Seyyed Khatami.
UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, will attend on Wednesday and Thursday. He is expected to discuss issues such as Angola’s fragile peace process, and the escalating conflict in the DRC.
The United States, France, the United Kingdom, as well as representatives of the G8 group of industrialised nations, and the European Union, will be present as guests, NAM secretariat spokesman Abdul Minty said on Friday.
Describing their attendance as unprecedented,he said it was also an indication of the new importance attached to the meeting by the developed world.
However, Minty said, both Pakistan and Indonesia have pulled out of the summit. “I think [Pakistan has] an internal difficulty which they say makes it difficult for them to come,” he said. Pakistan’s nuclear rivalry with its neighbour India and both countries’ series of nuclear tests earlier this year in contravention of a global ban, is likely to be one of the key global issues discussed at the summit.
Iran is to chair the political committee of the summit, which prepares the final document for the heads of state to endorse at the summit proper next Wednesday and Thursday, Minty announced. Tanzania will chair the economic committee. The rapporteur general of the conference, which presents its final conclusions, will be Trinidad and Tobago. A total of 89 of the 113 NAM member-states had so far confirmed they would be sending representatives at some level.