Senior Iranian MP: NAM Seeking to Counter Autocratic Rule over Globe

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - A senior Iranian legislator underlined the necessity for the collective management of world affairs and developments, and said the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) is after changing the autocratic system of the world management.

"What the NAM pursues is to fundamentally counter the totalitarian management on the world arena," said member of the parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Kazzem Jalali.

"Basically speaking, NAM is pursuing the view that global management should be wise and based on the partnership of all UN members and not the selfish approach of the US," he added.

NAM was founded in Belgrade in 1961 by Yugoslav president Josip Broz Tito, Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, Ghana's first president Kwame Nkrumah, and Indonesian president Sukarno, all legends of the national liberation movement, with solid anti-imperial credentials, who advocated a middle course for the developing world between the Western and Eastern blocs in the Cold War.

Its principles are solidarity and peaceful resolution of conflicts, though it was founded as a counterweight to the superpowers, abjuring big power military alliances and pacts.

Nonetheless, NAM represents nearly two-thirds of UN members and 55% of the world's population. At the seventh summit held in New Delhi in 1983, the movement described itself as "history's biggest peace movement", placing equal emphasis on disarmament.

During the 1970s and early 1980s, NAM sponsored a campaign for restructuring commercial relations between developed and developing nations, the New International Economic Order and its cultural offspring, the New World Information and Communication Order, which still has relevance today.

The movement is publicly committed to sustainable development and the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals, making international financial decision-making more democratic, easing poor countries' debt burden, making trade fairer and increasing foreign aid.

Now, its system of rotating leadership has put it back in the spotlight, as its summit is set for Tehran at a time of the western sanctions against Iran due to its peaceful nuclear program. 

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