The non-aligned line up against America

With little media fanfare a meeting took place in Tehran last week that could have huge repercussions. The gathering of the 100-plus nations of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), a club which brings together politicians from Equatorial Guinea, Turkmenistan, Venezuela, Mauritius and Saudi Arabia, will come as a surprise to many, partly because it still meets and partly because it was held in Iran.

As a 'child' of the Cold War, NAM was established back in 1961 as a forum for those nations declining to align themselves with either of the protagonists, the US and Nato or the USSR and the Warsaw Pact. Of course, non-alignment meant mostly anti-Western, invoking all the usual -isms: capitalism, imperialism, colonialism. Early leaders were India's Nehru, Egypt's Nasser and Yugoslavia's communist Tito, but there have been a sprinkling of latter-day tyrants such as Robert Mugabe and, of course, Fidel Castro.

What became clear at last week's conference, however, was that the 47-year-old NAM recognised it had failed to become a significant voice in world affairs and was seeking a 'new direction' towards a 'new world order'.  "The NAM desperately needs a new and bold initiative on the economic front," says Kaveh Afrasiabi, author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy, "otherwise its legitimacy may soon be questioned by its constituents, who happen to be the majority of the world's population inhabiting the 'Third World'."

This year's conference, Solidarity for Peace, Justice and Friendship, set itself an expansive agenda to discuss terrorism, reform, disarmament, human rights, world media and global economics.

Of even greater significance, though, was the debate over whether NAM members should join the UN Security Council - or develop NAM itself into a fully-fledged rival to the UN.

Led since September 2007 by Castro's Cuba, NAM pulled no punches in citing the UN for "serving the interests of world powers" in the "mismanagement of the global order". Upon closer inspection, as Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's opening speech made clear, what they mean by this is that the UN is merely a lackey of US foreign policy - an assertion that will come as something of a shock to Russia, China and France.

The Iranian president (right) told representatives that the world was entering a "new phase" in which NAM could become a real alternative to the United Nations Security Council, listing various failures by the UN to rein in US power as the key issue. In pursuing this goal, and in its discussion of various policies, what becomes abundantly clear is that NAM's 'new world order' will be distinctly 'anti-American'. And what better place than Tehran to make the point?

NAM leaders also want to impact the 'world information order' which they see as dominated by US, UK and Western European influence. So a key goal of the conference was to set up 'new media partnerships'. Terrorism too was high on the agenda, and the setting up of a NAM 'human rights and cultural diversity centre' based in Iran.

All of this under discussion by NAM's 118 foreign ministers in the home of the leading state-sponsor of global terrorism; a regime with the dedicated foreign policy aim to 'wipe Israel off the map'; and in a country that rigorously imposes Sharia law, ignoring religious tolerance and human rights, ridicules cultural diversity and denies basic freedoms.
Written in collaboration with Peter Glover. ·