President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe opened proceedings on the second and final day of the three-yearly NAM summit with a blistering attack on the United States and President George W. Bush as a “big brother” proliferating arms and on Brtain’s Tony Blair as a neo-colonialist.

 The United States should set an example by being the first to destroy its enormous stocks of weapons, Mugabe said.

 “Iraq might have developed or desired to develop arms of mass destruction,” he said. “But the United States has massive arms of that magnitude. Why can’t they demonstrate what Iraq should (do) by destroying their own massive heaps first?”

 Iraqi Vice-President Taha Yassim Ramadan on Monday welcomed the NAM position, saying leaders of the movement had shown more support for Iraq than even its Arab neighbours.

 Support came from an expected quarter when Syria said it would vote against a second resolution on Iraq filed by Britain on Monday at the United Nations.

 “There is no justification for suggesting any draft. The inspectors are doing their work in implementation of resolution 1441,” Vice-President Abdel-Halim Khaddam told Reuters. ”Therefore, we do not agree with this draft.”

 Syria holds one of the revolving seats on the 15-member Security Council and is the only Arab member.

 NAM’s views matter because five other members are currently on the UN Security Council -- Angola, Guinea, Chile, Pakistan and Cameroon. Seven votes against can defeat a resolution.

 Leaders stressed the importance of respect for UN processes as NAM struggles for relevance in a world with just one remaining superpower.

 Most developing nations want weapons inspectors in Iraq to be given more time. NAM nations have seized on a March 1 deadline for Iraq to start destroying longer-range missiles and avert war.

 “Ferocious bull-dogs”

 The speeches that increasingly pitched the Third World against the richer nations maintained the theme of opposition to war while urging Iraq to comply with UN resolutions and get rid of any weapons of mass destruction.

 The United States, Britain and the West “have turned themselves into ferocious hunting bull-dogs raring to go as they sniff for more blood, Third World blood”, Mugabe told the 116-member movement.

 “We, their hunted game, are for slaughter,” he said.

 Cuba’s Fidel Castro said the world was living in hard times and issued a clarion call to mobilise world public opinion. ”Our most sacred duty is to fight and fight we will.”

 The summit was set to issue a statement that Baghdad comply with UN demands and scrap weapons of mass destruction, but it would also take a swipe at the United States by stressing the need for multilateral, rather than unilateral, action.

 The United States, backed by Britain, is massing troops on Iraq’s border and threatening war unless Saddam Hussein surrenders the alleged weapons.  While many NAM members want to discuss ways to boost the living standards of countries whose 116 economies combined are equal only to 90 percent of the US economy, the issue of weapons of mass destruction dominated.

 Delegates massed in the conference hall for the fourth speech of the day, a rare appearance at an international forum by Kim Yong Nam, president of secretive North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly whose country is at the heart of a nuclear crisis.

 Kim did not mince words in attacking the United States.

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 Isolated North Korea

 “The nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula is the eventual product of the deep-rooted policy pursued by the US for more than half a century in order to isolate and stifle the DPRK (North Korea),” Kim said.

 However, North Korea’s nuclear activities “at this stage would be confined only to the peaceful purposes such as the production of electricity”, said Kim, the number two after Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang’s communist hierarchy.

 North Korea fired a land-to-ship missile into the sea near the Korean peninsula on Monday.  Kim repeated North Korea’s demand for a non-aggression treaty with Washington as the way to solve the crisis.

 Members of NAM, which had watered down a statement on North Korea’s nuclear ambitions after Pyongyang insisted there be no criticism of its policy, expressed consternation.

 “It is worthless if North Korea insists on this course of action of testing missiles at a time when the international community is appealing to them to reconsider,” said a Chilean delegate. “All NAM members will lament this. We have to consult.”

 Foreign Minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri of nuclear power Pakistan said: “We want all countries in the world, including North Korea, to obserclear and missile restraint.”

 The crisis began in October, when US officials said North Korea had admitted pursuing a covert nuclear weapons programme.