BANDUNG, April 24: Asian and African leaders on Sunday signed a new strategic alliance to boost trade and tackle poverty, but warned their attempt to revive an historic bond forged half a century ago would falter without firm action. Under massive security, scores of heads of state gathered in the Indonesian of Bandung for a ceremony to endorse the pact to improve the lives of almost three quarters of the world’s people, including many of its poorest.
Indonesia’s President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and co-host Thabo Mbeki of South Africa were joined by China’s Hu Jintao, Junichiro Koizumi of Japan and UN chief Kofi Annan on a symbolic stroll through the sealed-off city centre.
The leaders were attempting to recreate a walk in 1955 made by iconic statesmen including China’s Zhou Enlai, India’s Jawaharlal Nehru and Indonesia’s Sukarno as they plotted the birth of the Non-Aligned Movement in Bandung.
But while their modern day successors hope the new friendship will match the “spirit” of the previous Bandung summit’s epochal stand in the Cold War era, analysts say it is unlikely to reap long term benefits.
At the signing ceremony, Yudhoyono also warned that the alliance of almost 90 countries would falter unless Asian and Africa nations remained united in their commitment to broad pledges of cooperation and mutual support.
“History will judge us on the basis of what we do in the days, months and years ahead — whether we are true to the Bandung spirit, or we fail it through failure of political nerve.”
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the two continents must strive to equal the original meeting and the Non-Aligned Movement, or NAM, it spawned, describing 1955 as the “high noon of internationalism and idealism”.
“Just as the NAM played a central role in the struggle for political emancipation in the past, we need to revitalize this movement to a make it a vehicle for rapid social and economic transformation and emancipation in our lives.”
The leaders have agreed to meet again in South Africa in 2009, hoping to consolidate the work of a two-day summit in Jakarta by making it a regular fixture.
Observers, however, say although well-meaning, the alliance will miss its goals.
Amitav Acharya, the deputy director of Singapore’s Institute for Strategic Studies said the 2005 meeting may help formulate ways to tackle issues such as HIV/AIDS but the long-term eradication of poverty would be beyond their grasp.
“The Bandung spirit is something of a myth, Bandung was a very successful meeting, it created the Non-Aligned Movement,” he said. “But it was a different time, I’m not sure this will have the same impact, the world has moved on.”
Sunday’s trip down memory lane ending in a minute of silence and ceremony to plant Asian and African trees was almost purely symbolic, lacking the mould-breaking gravitas of the original meeting, said Mr Acharya.
“For many of those attending in 1955, this was their first international summit, but that’s not the case now. Almost half the original Bandung members were not part of the United Nations, now almost all are.
“The new summit could lead to dialogue, but mostly it’s nostalgia.”
In his ceremonial address, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo sounded an upbeat note, declaring: “The spirit of Bandung is not only alive, but alive and kicking.”
Underscoring the Jakarta meeting’s flaws were high profile rifts between some of the alliance’s most powerful members, which overshadowed the main events as leaders used them as a platform to air their gripes.
The summit’s real climax came on Saturday when the leaders of Japan and China shook hands after a three-week standoff that has seen violence break out in Chinese cities in protest at Japan’s wartime atrocities.
China’s Hu finally agreed to meet Koizumi after the Japanese prime minister used the summit to offer his country’s most public apology in a decade for past aggression.—AFP
