NAM members voice readiness to attend Tehran Summit

ministerial and heads-of-state meetings in Tehran late this month, senior Iranian officials announced.
“All the 120 members of the Movement will attend the meeting,” Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi told reporters on the sidelines of a cabinet meeting in Tehran.
Speaking during a meeting with a special envoy of Iranian President in Harare last month, President Mugabe who hosted the 1986 Nam summit said that the 16th Nam summit should serve as a platform to reinvigorate and resuscitate the movement.
Iran also announced early last month that over 30 presidents had announced their readiness to attend the gathering. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ramin Mehman-Parast made the remarks, adding that the majority of invitation letters had reached the heads of member states and sending them has almost been completed. During the upcoming summit, Iran will assume the rotating presidency of the movement from Egypt.
According to Press TV, Iran has invited Egypt’s new president Mohamed Mursi to attend the summit.
Nam is an international organisation of states considering themselves not formally aligned with and/or against any major power bloc, and it comprises120-member states and 17 observer countries. It is the largest grouping of countries outside of the United Nations. President Mugabe has said while Zimbabwe is happy that Iran was hosting the gathering, he was concerned that developing countries that constitute the larger part of the United Nations membership are denied equal membership with the West in the world body.
“The organisation has been left to be inactive as it has not been meeting as often as it should, at a time when it is confronted with the arrogance by the Western powers, as evidenced by events in North Africa,” said President Mugabe.
NAM member states represent nearly two-thirds of the United Nations’ members and comprise 55 percent of the world population, particularly countries considered to be developing. — FNA/Irna/ zbc.co.zw.