Havana: India's role in the negotiations on the declarations and statements to be made at the end of the XIV non-aligned summit being held here has been in tune with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's call to the movement to serve as the voice of "moderation, harmony and reason," according to official sources.

While it was for the declarations on the NAM's role to be true to its original mission, it had also supported the strong positions taken on Lebanon and on Iran, the sources said. The Prime Minister had in his address spoken of new initiatives including a high level group for West Asia to work towards a comprehensive peace and a NAM working group on energy security. His idea of NAM as a "bridge of understanding" among cultures and his proposals had won the appreciation of several countries including Indonesia, Lebanon, Mauritius and Nepal.

New tendencies

The Indian effort at the summit had been to steer clear of two new tendencies that would have taken the movement away from its moorings. The first was Malaysia's promotion of the Islamic agenda in its role as both the Chairman of NAM and of the Organisation of Islamic Countries that would have resulted in an almost exclusive focus on the issues relating to West Asia, even as it struck a moderate note on economic issues. The second was the radical tendency of Cuba with unnecessarily strong language and rhetoric that would have made engagement with the rest of the world difficult. India was for a serious and firm approach to issues shorn of rhetoric.

On terrorism, there were concerns that the determination to fight it would be diluted with qualifications over the right of oppressed people under occupation and the right to self-determination, but the final language that emerged after negotiations commits the movement to countering terrorism committed "wherever, by whomsoever and on whatever pretext." In recognition of the situation in West Asia, particularly in Palestine and Lebanon, there would be the traditional condemnation of "state terrorism" in the final documents.

Contentious issues

There were some other areas too where the summit declarations turned contentious. For instance, over globalisation, India wanted the unnecessarily harsh language that condemned globalisation outright to be changed. The Indian position was that globalisation offered economic opportunities to the developing countries, only its present architecture was iniquitous and had to be changed.

Again, it was opposed to moves to invest NAM with an activist role in conflict resolution in competition with regional groups and the United Nations Security Council. On disarmament, references to such ideas as weapons of mass destruction free zones in specific regions such as West Asia were removed. Instead, the emphasis was on universal and complete nuclear disarmament on which India would submit a proposal to the U.N.

Stand satisfies Iran

India had supported the strong stand of NAM in support of Iran on the lines of the previous statement issued by the group in Putrajaya in May 2006. The final declaration would call for a resumption of a dialogue on the Iran nuclear issue "without any preconditions," which would run contrary to the position of the U.N. Security Council that Iran must stop enrichment before any dialogue can be resumed. Iran itself expressed satisfaction with this formulation and did not press for anything more.

Varying concerns

Much of the negotiations were around specific concerns that individual members wanted to be introduced into the final documents. For instance, Bolivia under its new President Morales wanted a condemnation of the demonisation of the coca leaf (the source of cocaine), arguing that it had a useful role to play in traditional medicine in the region. On the other hand, the Singapore representative strongly opposed the legitimisation of a substance the possession of which entailed a death sentence in his country.

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