CONFIDENTIAL
NON-ALIGNED MOVEMENT
1.
The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) was established in 1961 at Belgrade. It now has a membership of 95 (including two liberation organisations, PLO and SWAPO). Observer states have included Barbados, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominica, Ecuador, Mexico, Philippines, Uruguay and Venezuela. Guest states have included Austria, Finland, Spain, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland. The NAM has no Charter, permanent machinery or Secretariat. Summit meetings are held every three years, with inter- vening meetings at Foreign Minister level. The last Summit meeting took place in Havana in September 1979, when Cuba took over the Chairmanship from Sri Lanka. The most recent meeting at Foreign Minister level in Delhi in February 1981 was brought forward from the summer of 1981 to allow for high-level debate on the situation in Afghanistan, Meetings are also held at permanent representative level in New York at least bi-monthly. There is a 36-member Coordinating Bureau, and ad hoc committees meet on particular issues such as Cyprus (normally in New York). Iraq will become the next Chairman at the Summit meeting to be held in September 1982.
2.
The Cubans have made no secret of their desire to bring the Movement closer to the Soviet bloc. However, they and their allies did not succeed in rewriting non-aligned principles to support the thesis that the non-aligned countries were the natural allies of the socialist bloc, at the Havana Summit, and their questionable bullying tactics there proved counter-productive. They found themselves unable to steer the Movement in the way they wished and were one of the small minority of the non-aligned (9) to vote in January 1980 against
(76) MEDENTIAL
/the resolution
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