The focus at the Non-Aligned Meeting (NAM), which gets under way in Durban today, is to be on economic strategies for developing nations to face the challenges not only of multilateralism in negotiations and the globalisation of markets but also of the recent crises in Southeast and East Asia.
South Africa, the host and chairman, is likely to push Western growth-centric models of development as it seeks to revitalise NAM, which has remained largely listless under its two previous chairs, Indonesia and Colombia, during a period that marked the end of the Cold War and the globalisation of markets.
The Indian delegation at Durban will have to walk a tightrope with regard to South African sensivities on nuclear non-proliferation. The host has taken a strong line in international fora for several years now in defence of the status quo which favours the five established nuclear weapons powers.
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However, Indian diplomats are confident they will not face censure or marginalisation. One of them pointed out that the South African foreign minister told Indian representatives during recent talks that his country's policy required him to criticise India. He did not expect South Africa to go out of its way to corner India. Another diplomat pointed out that the delegation that went to the Cartegena ministerial meeting of NAM within days of India's nuclear tests in May had a mandate to threaten to withdraw from NAM altogether if there was any serious effort to corner India. South Africa has invited the US as a guest at this meeting but India has little to fear since it is engaged in dialogue with the US.
Pakistan had lobbied against India at Cartegena but did not press for a strong position against India's decision to test, probably because Pakistan was poised to test its own nuclear devices within days thereafter. Western powers, many of them guests and observers at NAM, however, lobbied strongly against India. At Durban, Pakistan's delegation will not be led by its Prime Minister, who is beleaguered with economic crisis and fundamentalist anger at home. It is, therefore, not likely to make as much of an impression at Durban as it might have. In addition, in the wake of the bombings of the US embassies in two other African nations, Pakistan is likely to be on the defensive with regard to international terrorism. India's delegations plans to press that issue and call for concerted international action to combat terrorism. India's delegation intends to how India has been the biggest victim of international terrorism.
If India does face a problem, it could be from the South Africans, who have consistently defended and promoted the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty along with the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. At the previous NAM summit at Cartegena, South Africa and Chile foiled an attempt by India to get NAM to call for the timebound destruction of all nuclear weapons.
Subsequently, South Africa contradicted India when it stated that this was a NAM position during the United Nations General Assembly in 1995. India wanted on behalf of NAM to push timebound and universal nuclear disarmament into the mandate of the Conference on Disarmament that drafted the CTBT in 1996.
South Africa of course has a peculiar history with regard to nuclear weapons. It is the only country in the world that is believed to have developed nuclear weapons and then destroyed them. Some Indian diplomats believe that, during the Cold War, the US allowed the white regime in South Africa to develop nuclear weapons under its doctrine of "total national response" to the "total onslaught" it feared from what it then called the frontline states around it, many of which were Communist or otherwise close to the Soviet Union.
When the white regime was collapsing, at around the same time as the Soviet Union was, it destroyed its weapons. However, as a senior Indian diplomat pointed out, a weapons capable state always remains capable of developing weapons again.