South African President Thabo Mbeki has urged the Non-Aligned Movement to work flat out to resolve world conflicts, reform the United Nations and towards the eradication of poverty.
Officially opening the NAM Ministerial Conference in Durban, Mbeki said the movement was facing the challenge of finding solutions to the conflicts in Iraq, Palestine, Haiti and Africa's Great Lakes region.
Mbeki, who had just returned from Tanzania, where he attended the regional summit seeking a resolution to the Great Lakes conflict, said there were three major challenges facing the movement.
These were poverty, peace and security and promoting multilateralism in the world.
"We have no other global instrument except the Non-Aligned Movement to address the objectives which we share.
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"We need to ask ourselves what we need to do to strengthen this organisation so that it is able to help address the problems of poverty and underdevelopment, and secure peace and stability for ourselves," he said.
He warned the 115-member-states movement to guard against the concentration of power in one centre, saying this tended to breed unilateralism.
"The restructuring of NAM has dragged on for too long," he said, adding that institutions such as the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation needed to be transformed to be responsive to the needs of the poor and the marginalised.
The NAM Ministerial Conference is taking place in Durban together with the Asian-Africa Sub-Regional Organisation conference, which also opened in the city on Thursday.
- This article was originally published on page 2 of The Mercury on August 20, 2004
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