Of primary significance in the global strategy for world peace is the need for meaningful steps towards disarmament, including nuclear disarmament. Disarmament will reduce the risks of war and enable a significant diversion of funds to the urgent problems of economic and social development facing non-aligned countries.
International Co-operation
Perhaps the most meaningful achievement of the non-aligned and developing countries over the years has been to focus attention on the importance of international economic co-operation in overcoming the problems facing developing countries including unfavourable terms of trade, extremely heavy debt burdens, scientific and technological backwardness and the age-old ills of poverty, hunger and malnutrition.
The solidarity and unity of the non-aligned group in this field has proved to be a catalyst in the largest forum of the Group of 77 and has already yielded results. The adoption of the U.N. Charter on Economic Rights and Duties in 1974 and the resolutions adopted at the sixth and seventh special sessions of the United Nations General Assembly are examples. These were important milestones in our quest towards collective self-reliance and global inter-dependence and are indicative of the growing awareness amongst developed countries of the need to find urgent and constructive solutions to the problems of the under-developed majority of the world.
Unfortunately, actual implementation has fallen short of expectations. The hopes placed on UNCTAD-IV have been belied and many of the promises contained in the declarations of the World Food Conference and the second UNIDO Conference have yet to materialise. Rather than lose hope this should be taken as an indication of the continuing importance of maintaining unity and solidarity, even in the face of efforts to divide us. In addition, the non-aligned should not fail to explore the considerable scope for expanding technical and economic co-operation among developing countries themselves. Technological skills are available in some developing countries and financial resources in ethers. Future non-aligned conferences should give increasing at tension to the prospects and possibilities in his area.
Both among non-aligned countries and between the non-aligned group as a whole and developed countries, the aim should be to evolve a meaningful dialogue rather than to get bogged down in the morass of confrontation.
Today more than ever before the non-aligned nations face new challenges and opportunities. Our ability to overcome these challenges and to make the maximum of the opportunities will depend on the extent to which we can preserve the integrity, cohesiveness and solidarity of the non-aligned movement, and on the extent to which we can withstand the attempts to dilute and weaken it by pressures from outside and within.