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to tackle the fallout from the global economic meltdown, with calls for a
"new world order" to prevent a repeat of the crisis. Cuban President Raul
Castro said in a speech at the opening session of the Non-Aligned Movement
summit that the financial crisis had hit developing nations the hardest.
"Every country in the world must seek just solutions to the global economic
crisis," Castro told the 118- member body at the gathering in the Red Sea
resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. "We call for a new monetary and economic world
order... we must restructure the world financial system to take into
consideration the needs of developing countries." Global power dynamics also
need to be addressed, Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi said, demanding a
restructuring of the UN Security Council which he branded a form of
terrorism " monopolised by a few countries that are permanent members."
"This represents a danger toward international peace. We have suffered all
sorts of harm from the Security Council, it has become a sword over our
necks," he said. "The Security Council is terrorism." Kadhafi said he wanted
to correct the imbalance at the Security Council, demanding a permanent seat
for the 53- member African Union, which he chairs. But the developing
world's military ambitions looked set to steal the summit limelight, with
nuclear-armed South Asian foes India and Pakistan to hold talks on Thursday
aimed at relaunching stalled peace talks. New Delhi and Islamabad's fraught
relations deteriorated after terror attacks in the Indian commercial capital
Mumbai in November last year which killed 166 people. The attacks were
blamed by India on the banned Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, and
Pakistan has acknowledged they were partially planned on its soil. Indian
foreign secretary Shiv Shankar Menon met his Pakistani counterpart Salim
Bashir on Tuesday ahead of the meeting between Indian Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh and Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani. Singh has
voiced hope that Pakistan will promise action against those behind the
attacks when he meets Gilani for only the second high-level contact between
the two sides since the Mumbai bombings. Pakistan said on Saturday that it
would "probably" put the five accused of involvement in the attacks on trial
next week. The attacks left in tatters a fragile peace process launched in
2004 to resolve all outstanding issues of conflict, including a territorial
dispute over the divided Himalayan territory of Kashmir. India, along with
host Egypt, is one of the founding members of the NAM, the largest grouping
of countries outside of the United Nations, aimed at giving a voice to the
developing world. The summit will "provide a chance for discussions over the
international economic crisis, which first started in the industrialised
countries, and greatly impacted the developing countries, especially
Africa," Zimbabwe Foreign Minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi said on Tuesday.
He said industrialised states "should not be given free rein to manage such
a crisis." Founded in 1955 , NAM's 118 member states represent around 56
percent of the global population. NAM states consider themselves not
formally aligned with or against any major power bloc. Set up during the
Cold War, the movement sought to distance itself from both the Western and
Soviet blocs, but today its raison d'etre is questioned after the collapse
of the Soviet Union and the ensuing shift in power politics.
