The start of the two-day Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit yesterday in Tehran, an event Iran hailed as proof it was not internationally isolated, got off to a rocky start with fiery speeches from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi.
The NAM, born at the height of the Cold War, started out as a group of nations seeing themselves as independent of the two power blocs of the US and Soviet Union.
Since then, it has become a vehicle for championing the interests of developing states.
Photo: EPA / KHAMENEI OFFICIAL WEB SITE
“Our motto is nuclear energy for all and nuclear weapons for none,” Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told the assembled heads of state.
Attendees included the presidents of Afghanistan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Sudan, Zimbabwe and the Palestinian Authority, as well as the emir of Qatar. The prime ministers of India, Iraq and Syria were also present and Pyongyang was represented by its ceremonial head of state, North Korean Parliamentary President Kim Yong-nam.
In his speech, Khamenei criticized the UN Security Council as an illogical and unjust relic of the past used by the US “to impose its bullying manner on the world.”
“They [Americans] talk of human rights when what they mean is Western interests. They talk of democracy when what they have is military intervention in other countries,” he said.
However, the Iranians then had to listen while being denounced for calling for Israel’s destruction and denying the Holocaust.
“I strongly reject threats by any member state to destroy another or outrageous attempts to deny historical facts such as the Holocaust,” Ban said in his speech, without naming Iran.
Morsi, the first Egyptian leader to visit Iran since 1979, also did not mince his words as he urged NAM members to back Syrians against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Tehran’s closest Arab ally.
Morsi, a moderate Egyptian Islamist, said solidarity with the Syrian people “against an oppressive regime that has lost its legitimacy is an ethical duty” and a strategic necessity.
His words prompted Syrian delegates to leave the hall.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem said the delegation withdrew “in rejection of the incitement in the speech to continue the shedding of Syrian blood.”
The NAM summit’s final declaration is set to express deep concern about the violence in Syria and support for efforts by UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to broker a resolution to the conflict, a delegate at the meeting told reporters.
Morsi’s blunt remarks on Syria suggested there would be no early restoration of Egyptian-Iranian diplomatic ties, which broke down after the Iranian revolution over Egypt’s support for the overthrown Shah and over its peace agreement with Israel.
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