Havana – The summit of the 116-member Non-Aligned Movement got under way here Monday with a call from host government Cuba “to close ranks” in defense of their interests against the threats facing the nations that make up the group.
Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque called for unity in a movement that is, he said, “more necessary than ever,” during his welcoming address to the delegates of member nations.
“It seems indispensable that we close ranks to defend our rights,” Perez Roque said, adding that the “threats and difficulties” that face the Non-Aligned countries are “similar and have common origins.”
Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Abelardo Moreno said at a press conference that the number of heads of state and government attending the event “will be a lot more than 50.”
Noting the meager presence of Latin American heads of state, he said that this fact “should not lead to hasty conclusions about a division in Latin America or some kind of political split.”
“The heads of state and of government have many obligations, many responsibilities, many commitments,” he said.
On the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, the NAM gathering issued no statement mentioning it, although one of the articles of the final document refers to terrorism.
“The fight against terrorism cannot be dictated by dates on the calendar; the fight against terrorism must be dictated by attitudes, policies, acts, actions, and that is said by a representative of one of the countries most affected by terrorism on this planet for the past 45 years,” Moreno said.
The official was referring to attempts by Washington and/or U.S.-based Cuban exiles to overthrow the Communist government of Fidel Castro, which has been in power since Jan. 1, 1959.
The 80-year-old strongman, who handed over power provisionally to younger brother Raul Castro on July 31 for the duration of his recovery from intestinal surgery, is expected to attend a dinner with summit participants later this week.
Apart from the final declaration, this week’s working sessions will focus on a statement seeking to define NAM aims and its role in the current international situation.
Havana expects more than 3,000 guests at the 14th NAM summit, most of the 116 member nations as well as a number of international organizations and governments invited as observers.
The movement was founded at the height of the Cold War by countries eschewing allegiance to either superpower, but that didn’t stop Castro’s Cuba from being a client of the former Soviet Union or other NAM governments from maintaining close ties with the United States.
The Ladies in White, a group comprising relatives of jailed Cuban dissidents, has requested a meeting with NAM leaders and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan during this week’s conclave in Havana, spokeswoman Laura Polland told EFE Monday.
In a letter sent late last month, the Ladies appealed to NAM nations to use the summit as an opportunity to press the Cuban government for the release of political prisoners.
Honored last year by the European Parliament with the Sakharov Prize for human-rights activism, the Ladies in White is made up of wives, mothers, sisters and other female kin of the members of the “Group of 75,” the name given to the dissidents picked up in Havana’s spring 2003 crackdown on the domestic opposition.
The 75, a dozen of whom have since been released on medical grounds, were convicted in summary trials and sentenced to prison terms averaging 20 years for “crimes” that included undermining the principles of the Cuban Revolution.
