20.
Significant economic decisions at Havana
The non-aligned bureau meeting of Foreign Ministers, held in Havana from 17 to 19, March 1975, took place one year after the earlier bureau meeting of Algiers in March, 1974. Important developments have taken place on the international scene in the political and economic spheres during this period, and the meeting provided a valuable opportunity for the ministers of the seventeen countries assembled at Havana to review and assess the situation. Apart from the members of the bureau, delegations from over twenty-four other non-aligned countries were present as observers.
As the meeting was taking place in Havana, special attention was naturally devoted to developments in Latin America and the Caribbean. While the Caribbean countries have only recently emerged into independence, the Latin American countries attained their independence over a century or more ago. However, it is not very long since the process of their economic emancipation has begun. In more recent years, with the entry into the non-aligned conference of more Latin American countries — Cuba was the first, there are at present six members — the trend towards increasing adherence to the principles of non-alignment has become manifest in Latin America. This is an important contemporary process which was noted with particular appreciation at the Havana meeting.
Ever since the non-aligned summit in Lusaka in 1970, the non-aligned countries have been expressing concern at the escalation of tension in the Indian Ocean area. Thanks to the initiative of the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, the United Nations also adopted in 1971 the Declaration on the Indian Ocean as a zone of peace. Since then, the non-aligned countries, both at the United Nations and in their own meetings, have been urging the speedy implementation of the objectives of the U.N. Declaration. The Havana meeting has noted again with deep concern the strengthening of air and naval military presence and of foreign bases in this region. The expansion of the base in Diego Garcia against the expressed wishes of the overwhelming majority of the littoral and hinterland States has been condemned as a negative development.
In view of this worsening of the situation in the Indian Ocean, the Ministers assembled in Havana have called for strict compliance with the U.N. Declaration on the Indian Ocean as a zone of peace. In my statement at the plenary session in Havana. I pointed out that the induction of arms into the countries belonging to military alliances in our neighbourhood is a grave development, which cannot but retard the process of normalisation and relaxation of tension in our area.