March 5, 2003
Delegates at last week's summit of the Non-Aligned Movement went out of their way to prove their relevance, or otherwise, writes Eric Ellis
It can be tricky organising a conference for a world as volatile as the Third World. Just when you've festooned the host capital with flags to welcome leaders of 114 nations and their entourages, as Kuala Lumpur did last week for the 13th summit of the Non-Aligned Movement, there's a coup, a change in name or national symbol. Or it's just a case that some members are so obscure – welcome São Tomé and Príncipe – your protocol department has never heard of them, let alone possess their flag.
The Malaysians had a face-saving solution – stickers. Problem was their adhesion left something to be desired. Thus, as leaders such as Robert Mugabe, Fidel Castro and Megawati Sukarnoputri filed to their team photo past the pillars displaying their flags, some delegates became unwitting flagpoles as they brushed past in the crush.
As war loomed over one member – Iraq – this was a gabfest of the good (take a bow East Timor) and not-so-good (all members of Washington's "axis of evil" present), with all of them falling over themselves to insist the NAM was still relevant in a US-dominated world.
Which was a stretch given that its very name is a holdover from a Cold War that's no longer fought. The NAM was conceived in 1955 in the Indonesian city of Bandung in the rosy post-colonial glow that then bathed what for the next 35 years would be a bipolar political world; America's capitalists versus the Soviet Union's communists. The NAM would be a powerful counter to Soviet and American hegemony, or so went the fiery rhetoric. Problem was many of NAM's members were anything but non-aligned. Step forward Cuba, propped up for years by Moscow, and Singapore, which hosts US bases.
Not much has changed for a group that seems essentially dysfunctional, united only by its relative poverty and the despotism of many of its regimes. Pakistan and India are both members but their respective leaders couldn't resist airing some dirty regional laundry, with descriptions of "terrorists" emanating from both camps.
And if politeness was the watchword for the conference, no one told new inductee, East Timor's Xanana Gusmao. His plea for Palestinian independence was well received in Malaysia but the same call for Western Sahara did not wash with the Moroccans, represented by no less than King Mohamed VI.
US ambassador Charles Twining noted that the words of caution from his hosts that anti-Americanism was in the air "turned out to be not true". Twining can't have been listening to Mugabe's rant that George W. Bush "was not elected", Washington and its western friends were "born-again colonialists [who] have turned themselves into ferocious hunting bulldogs raring to go as they sniff for Third World blood".
Twining would have expected such talk from Castro, whose five minutes at the lectern was a welcome five hours and 55 minutes less than normal. Perhaps Fidel was mindful of the 113 other delegations waiting to say their piece.
Still, when your man (and occasional woman) wasn't wowing the audience with similar themes, there was plenty for delegates to do. The bookshop reported strong sales of The International Jew and another tome spouting September 11 conspiracy theories. And the dinky pewter souvenir mugs at 20 ringgit (about $10) were something to take back to the family in Maputo or Thimpu.
Or you could retreat to the computers that organisers eager to present Malaysia as a thrusting technological power thoughtfully provided, to write or touch-up your leader's speech. At least, that was the idea but I noticed on one browser I used that the recently visited sites were penthouse.com, worldsex.com and teleguxxx.com, which displays comely Indian women, or so I'm told.
I retreated to the NAM web site for the latest speech but sadly it was offline – "page cannot be displayed" – not unlike the movement itself.