Leader: NAM Should Play a New Role in Emerging International Order | ||
Leader: NAM Should Play a New Role in Emerging International Order The world is in transition towards a new international order and the Non-Aligned Movement can and should play a new role, the Leader of Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei said on August 30 in his inaugural speech of the 16th NAM summit in Tehran. Heads of states from over 120 NAM member states and representatives of major international organizations participated in the summit which included Secretary-General of the United Nation Ban Ki-moon, Special Envoy of the Saudi King Abdulaziz bin Abdullah al-Saud, Emir of Qatar Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani, President of Pakistan Yusuf Ali Zardari and Lebanese President Michel Sulaiman. Prime Minister of Syria Wael Nader al-Halqi and the country’s Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem also attended the meeting. This new order should be based on the participation of all nations and equal rights for all of them. And as members of this movement, our solidarity is an obvious necessity in the current era for establishing this new order, he added. Commenting on the values of NAM, he added, today after the passage of nearly six decades, the main values of the Non-Aligned Movement remain alive and steady: values such as anti-colonialism, political, economic and cultural independence, non-alignment with any power blocs, and improving solidarity and cooperation among the member states. Current global conditions provide the Non-Aligned Movement with an opportunity that might never arise again. Our view is that the control room of the world should not be managed by the dictatorial will of a few Western countries, he said, adding that it should be possible to establish and ensure a participatory system for managing international affairs, one that is global and democratic. The UN Security Council has an illogical, unjust and completely undemocratic structure and mechanism. This is a flagrant form of dictatorship, which is antiquated and obsolete and whose expiry date has passed, he said. Good and evil are defined in a completely one-sided and selective way. This flawed and harmful situation cannot continue. Everybody has become tired of this faulty international structure. Referring to the issue of nuclear weapons, he said that nuclear weapons neither ensure security, nor do they consolidate political power, rather they are a threat to both security and political power. The Islamic Republic of Iran considers the use of nuclear, chemical and similar weapons as a great and unforgivable sin. We proposed the idea of “Middle East free of nuclear weapons” and we are committed to it. This does not mean forgoing our right to peaceful use of nuclear power and production of nuclear fuel. On the basis of international laws, peaceful use of nuclear energy is a right of every country. I stress that the Islamic Republic has never been after nuclear weapons and that it will never give up the right of its people to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Our motto is: “Nuclear energy for all and nuclear weapons for none.” Referring to the issue of Palestine, the Ayatollah Khamenei said, our standpoint is that Palestine belongs to the Palestinians and that continuing its occupation is a great and intolerable injustice and a major threat to global peace and security. All solutions suggested and followed up by the Westerners and their affiliates for “resolving the problem of Palestine” have been wrong and unsuccessful, and it will remain so in the future. We have put forth a just and entirely democratic solution. All the Palestinians – both the current citizens of Palestine and those who have been forced to immigrate to other countries but have preserved their Palestinian identity, including Muslims, Christians and Jews – should take part in a carefully supervised and confidence-building referendum and chose the political system of their country, and all the Palestinians who have suffered from years of exile should return to their country and take part in this referendum and then help draft a Constitution and hold elections. Peace will then be established. By pooling our resources and capacities, we members of the NAM can create a new historic and lasting role towards rescuing the world from insecurity, war and hegemony, he said. This goal can be achieved only through our comprehensive cooperation with each other. We should not fear the bullying powers when they frown at us, nor should we become happy when they smile at us. We should consider the will of God and the laws of creation as our support. We should learn lessons from what happened to the communist camp two decades ago and from the failure of the policies of so-called “Western liberal democracy” at the present time, whose signs can be seen by everybody in the streets of European countries and America and in the insoluble economic problems of these countries. The Ayatollah added, we can plan for effective economic cooperation and define paradigms for cultural relationships among ourselves. Undoubtedly, establishing an active and motivated secretariat for this organization will be a great and significant help in achieving these goals. | ||
Statistics View: 3,289 |
||