Western nations were attacked on Thursday for double standards on human rights and racist policies in the war against terrorism as the 114-nation Non-Aligned Movement began a conference expected to be dominated by the Iraq crisis.
Host Malaysia, opening a two-day NAM senior officials meeting, also railed against globalisation, which it said was threatening the viability and sovereignty of many poor and struggling economies.
Rich nations lectured developing countries for alleged human rights violations but ”acts of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and other forms of related intolerance” were growing in their own backyard, said Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar.
He voiced concern that political parties, which based their ideologies on racial superiority, racial discrimination or ethnic exclusivity were gaining popularity in rich nations following the terrorist attacks on the United States.
”It would seem that the fight against terrorism has brought out the worst racial impulses in these countries, which is now manifested in their policies established in the aftermath of September 11, including those which can be considered to be racial profiling,” Syed Hamid said.
”Clearly, rather than being defensive, NAM has to continue to be in the forefront of the fight against racism.”
Many NAM members are key players in the US-led war on terrorism — with its roll-call stuffed with countries from the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America.
But Syed Hamid said NAM, set up in the 1950s during the Cold War to counter the Eastern and Western power blocs, must first unite and put ”our own house in order so as to avoid interference from the rich and the powerful.”
The global economic situation held out little promise for NAM members, most of which are poor developing nations, and globalisation has been a ”bane” for the majority of them, he said.
”Our share of so-called prosperity brought by globalisation has been too little and too fleeting,” he said.
”Virtually all of us are indebted in varying degress to the rich … very often we have to swallow our national pride and put ourselves under their direction or tutelage. Those who do not do so are castigated as pariahs.”
These are the traditional concerns of the movement but the Iraq crisis is expected to hog the limelight, with NAM leaders set to deliver a resounding no to a US-led war in Iraq in a separate declaration to be issued after their two-day summit, which begins on Monday.
”We want to come to a common position on the situation in Iraq,” Malaysian foreign ministry secretary-general Ahmad Fuzi Abdul Razak told reporters.
”Worldwide, everybody thinks war is not a solution. It should be through negotiations and multilateral effort … this is the message we hope to convey.”
Ahmad Fuzi, who chairs two days of preparatory talks by NAM
senior officials ahead of a ministerial meeting Saturday and the leaders’ summit, said a separate statement on the Palestine issue would also be issued.
The main communiqué, dubbed the ”KL Declaration”, would touch on strengthening and revitalising NAM, he added. NAM has been seen as increasingly irrelevant since the collapse of the Soviet Union but with Iraq itself a member state, the crisis over its alleged weapons of mass destruction is regarded as an opportunity to reverse the decline in the organisation’s fortunes. – Sapa-AFP