(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - Taking over from Egypt, Iran’s leaders are readying themselves for their three-year term as head of the Nonaligned Movement, which will convene in Tehran in the last week of August.
The Nonaligned Movement, founded during the height of the cold war, when the divisions were chiefly East-West, regards itself as independent from the major centers of power, which are not quite as neatly lined up as before.
During a weeklong conference, followed by a leadership summit meeting, Iran says it will unfold plans to revitalize the movement and seek support for its nuclear enrichment program and its resistance to what it calls dominance by the United States.
Representatives of 118 of the 120 member nations, among them India and Indonesia, will travel to Tehran for the conference, while invitations have been extended to observer states and international organizations, such as the Arab League, and Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin.
Following the meeting, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as Iran’s head of state, will become the Nonaligned Movement’s representative in several international meetings, starting with the United Nations General Assembly in September in New York.
For Iran’s leaders, the conference performs the important function of underscoring what they say is worldwide support for their policy positions, particularly in the nuclear arena, where Iran has been subjected to strong Western sanctions over its refusal to halt uranium enrichment.
“It will show that this unipolar world is filled with justice-seeking countries, like the members of the N.A.M.,” said Ali Akbar Javanfekr, Mr. Ahmadinejad’s media adviser, in an interview on Saturday.
Iranian politicians maintain that the United States and Israel are trying to create what they call “Iranophobia,” trying to isolate its representatives during international meetings in Western capitals and portraying Iran as a rogue state.
On Friday, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, asked the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, not to travel to Tehran for the meeting, saying it would lend legitimacy to “a regime that represents the greatest danger to world peace,” an Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, reported.
On Friday, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, asked the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, not to travel to Tehran for the meeting, saying it would lend legitimacy to “a regime that represents the greatest danger to world peace,” an Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, reported.
The diplomatic bonanza of the conference will help counter that effort, an influential lawmaker, Gholam Reza Mesbahi Moghaddam, told the Khabar Web site, showing that “the United States has failed in its goal of isolating the Islamic republic from the rest of the world.”
Breaking with his practice of meeting primarily with Islamic leaders, Iran’s supreme leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is set to open the meeting. He is convinced that the world is on the eve of major changes, and says the West is economically and spiritually paralyzed while “Iran is providing answers to the world’s questions,” he said Sunday.
Iran also expects member nations to support its nuclear program, stressing that independence from world powers is every country’s right. As an organization, the nonaligned countries have often supported Iran’s drive for a nuclear energy program.
Iran had hoped the new Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, the group’s departing president, would serve as the guest of honor.
Since his election, Mr. Morsi has been embroiled in a power struggle with Egypt’s generals, a fight that boiled over this weekend with the forced retirement of several top officers.
President Bashar al-Assad of Syria is another expected no-show. “Obviously he is needed in Syria to manage the situation,” said Mohammad Reza Forqani, an official close to Mr. Ahmadinejad.
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