NEW DELHI, Nov 13: Leaders of the 114-nation Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) could assemble in New Delhi as early as December or perhaps by January for their 13th summit meeting after Dhaka backed out as the chosen host, and diplomats said on Tuesday that this could yet be another occasion for India and Pakistan to end their acrimonious standoff.
The diplomats were commenting on a report in the Hindu newspaper on Tuesday which said that New Delhi was quietly engaged in diplomatic lobbying to get the NAM summit allotted to New Delhi, ignoring Malaysia and Iran as the two other contenders for the honour which goes to Asia. South Africa is the current chairman of the movement.
India hosted the 1983 NAM summit when Iraq had expressed its inability to hold the meeting because of its involvement with the war with Iran.
At their last meeting in April in Colombia last year, the foreign ministers of NAM had apparently agreed to consider India’s demand to debar Pakistan from the membership of the movement by the time the leaders gathered in Dhaka. But, the diplomats said, the situation had changed completely since then and it was India that now needed Pakistan’s cooperation to win the tussle to play host to the august, if somewhat marginalised, gathering.
“As far as we understand Pakistan would not come in the way of India getting to host the summit,” a diplomat watching the progress of New Delhi’s campaign told Dawn. “In fact, it could be an opportunity for the two countries to begin anew to pick up the threads of their dialogue.”
If the NAM summit does happen in December it would almost certainly overtake the January 4-6 Kathmandu summit of SAARC nations of which India and Pakistan are again members. The Hindu said the chances were better that the meeting would happen next year.
“India is believed to be the front-runner among various candidates to host the summit of the non-aligned nations early next year,” the paper said. “The Foreign Office here is tight-lipped on the state of play within the NAM on choosing the host country.”
It quoted diplomatic sources as suggesting there was a reasonable prospect that New Delhi may be the eventual choice for the summit.
A final decision on the venue for the summit is likely to be made at a meeting of the NAM Foreign Ministers in New York later this week.
The abrupt move by the newly-elected government in Bangladesh led by Ms Khaleda Zia to back away from the commitment to host the summit has put the choice of venue right on top of the NAM Foreign Ministers meeting beginning Wednesday.
Indian External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh, who travelled to the United States with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, has stayed back in New York to attend the ministerial meeting.
Iran and Malaysia have also offered to hold the meeting in their capitals, the sources said. South Africa is the current chairman of the NAM. And now it is the turn of Asia to hold the summit. Hosting the summit in India after a gap of nearly two decades is likely to be quite popular across India, The Hindu said.
It said the main opposition Congress and other opposition parties were likely to welcome India devoting some diplomatic energy towards its traditional constituency in the NAM.
In recent years, India’s emphasis was on building relations with the United States and other major powers, and renewed activism within NAM could give a sense of balance to India’s foreign policy, the paper said. It quoted Congress party’s K. Natwar Singh, who heads the international affairs department of the Congress, as saying that it is “entirely appropriate for India” to step in at a critical moment in NAM affairs.
“There will be huge organisational problems in hosting the NAM summit at a time when the threat of international terrorism looms large and security requirements for heads of state have become much more expansive,” the report said. “But the real challenge for India, or any other host nation, will be to breathe new life into the non-aligned movement and make it relevant to the times.”
It said considerable international skepticism, some of it within the NAM itself, would have to be overcome in whipping up political enthusiasm for the summit. “But there is no shortage of big issues, like international terrorism, on which the movement can make a large political contribution at this moment,” the paper said.
