News mal Feb , 2003 www.aljazeerah.info

Al-Jazeerah, News

KUALA LUMPUR: Presidents, ministers, kings and sheikhs representing more than half the globe assembled Monday for a summit that kicked off with a call from host Malaysia to outlaw war, saying the US-led drive against terrorism and Iraq was a campaign to dominate non-white nations.
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad welcomed national leaders for a two-day summit of the 116-nation Non-Aligned Movement, which wants its voice heard in the US confrontations with Iraq and North Korea two member countries accused of having weapons of mass destruction.
The group wants Iraq to meet UN demands to disarm, but opposes any unilateral US invasion to force Baghdad to comply.
Mahathir, an influential Muslim statesman, called for the United Nations to be reformed to ensure world disarmament.
“No single nation should be allowed to police the world, least of all to decide what action to take, when,” he said.
“Everyone must disarm,” he added, warning that war was “the most important threat” facing the non-aligned bloc of mostly developing nations, which represents 55 percent of the world’s population and holds nearly two-thirds of the UN General Assembly seats.
“War must be outlawed; that will have to be our struggle for now,” Mahathir said at the summit’s opening.
Following the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, powerful countries were spearheading “a revival of the old European trait of wanting to dominate the world,” which Mahathir said “invariably involves injustice and oppression of people of other ethnic origins and colors.
“It is no longer just a war on terrorism. It is in fact a war to dominate the world i.e., the chromatically different world.”
The theme was soon taken up by Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, who described the United States as “self-appointed ‘master of the world’” driven by “fanatic fundamentalism” to spread its own moral and cultural values and remove anything standing in its way.
“It is unfortunate that the other superpower … allows itself, self-righteously, to hector others from a position of the ‘big brother’ worse still as the self appointed ‘master of the world,’” Khatami told the summit. “The problem, however, is not just to satisfy an instinct for a sense of superiority; rather, as is currently the case, the very security of many countries in the world is seriously threatened.”
Khatami also accused Washington of using force to steamroll international opponents.
During the run-up to the summit, foreign ministers reached consensus on urging Iraq to “actively comply” with UN resolutions to destroy its weapons of mass destruction, while also opposing any unilateral US attack.
But efforts to urge North Korea to return to a key nuclear arms-control treaty fell apart Monday. The North Koreans changed direction after initially agreeing to a statement that “underlined the importance” of their participation in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, delegates said. The final draft omitted the phrasing, according to the document.
The dispute with North Korea reflected what Mahathir termed the movement’s “struggle to outlaw nuclear weapons.” Six summit participants Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, Pakistan and Syria are members of the 15-seat UN Security Council, where the United States and Britain need a nine-vote majority to authorize an attack on Iraq.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in a message to the summit, cautioned against any action without Security Council authorization, saying weapons inspections in Iraq were “beginning to yield results.”
“I believe that war, even now, is not inevitable,” Annan said. “I urge the Iraqi leadership to choose full transparency and cooperation with the inspectors to help avoid conflict.”
Separately, in an incident that drew attention to the differences within the non-aligned group, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf sparked the ire of the Indian delegation when he used his slot to urge the forum to back “just struggles of peoples against illegal occupation.”
In response to Musharraf’s comments, Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee tore up his prepared speech and launched a scathing attack on Musharraf, condemning him for bringing up their bitter dispute over Kashmir.
A bloody anti-India rebellion, which New Delhi claims is backed by Islamabad, has claimed tens of thousands of lives in the disputed Himalayan region.
“He talks of the ‘oppressed people of Kashmir’. These same people very recently cast their ballots in an election universally recognized as free and fair,” Vajpayee said, referring to State Assembly elections in September and October. “They defied the bullets of the terrorists, aided and abetted by Pakistan. Those very terrorists assassinated candidates and political activists in the elections and killed women and children because they refused to provide them food and shelter.”
Indian Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha also took Musharraf to task for his “misuse” of the NAM summit, which promotes the interests of the world’s poorer nations.
“This was a misuse of the forum of NAM by Pakistan to bring up a purely bilateral issue and try to hijack the basic theme and thrust of this conference by referring to Jammu and Kashmir and comparing it to Palestine,” Sinha told journalists after Vajpayee’s attack.
The Non-Aligned Movement was founded in 1955 to steer a neutral path between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Mahathir seems intent on reinventing the group as an anti-war movement that could reach out to doves in rich countries which he refers to collectively as “the North” to form an influential voice to oppose the “slaughter of people for whatever reason.”
“We know we are weak. But we also know we have allies in the North,” he said. “They have come out in their millions to protest the warlike policies of their leaders. … We must join their struggle with all the moral force we can command.” Agencies

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