CHAPTER 11

STATEMENT REGARDING MEETING OF FOREIGN MINISTERS IN HAVANA

Lok Sabha , 7 April, 1975

As the House is aware, I attended the meeting of the Foreign Ministers of the Bureau of the Non-Aligned countries held in Havana from 17th to 19th March, 1975.

The Havana meeting took place an year after the earlier Bureau Meeting in Algiers in March, 1974. Important developments have taken place on the international scene both in the political and economic spheres during this period and the meeting provided a valuable opportunity for the Ministers of the 17 countries assembled at Havana to review and assess the situation. Apart from the members of the Bureau, delegations from over 24 other non-aligned countries were present as observers.

The meeting reaffirmed and reiterated the basic positions adopted by nonaligned countries in earlier Conference in regard to important issues like Detente, West Asia, Decolonisation, Indo-China and the Indian Ocean. On Cyprus, the Final Declaration issued at the end of the meeting and people of the non-aligned country, India, together with Algeria, Gayana, Yugoslavia and Mail - the group of five non-aligned countries which have been lending their good offices in the negotiations in the UN - evolved the consensus formulation in this matter.

The meeting expressed its solidarity with our Arab friends in their continued struggle to recover the territories illegally occupied by Israel by aggression and the restoration of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people. The failure in the following week of the efforts for further withdrawal by Israel has highlighted once again the gravity of the situation in West Asia and the urgent and imperative need to find a just and lasting solution which alone can ensure an enduring peace in the region.

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 and the Latin Americans over a century or more ago, 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-alinged 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 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 Garica against the expressed wishes of the overwhelming majority of the littrol and hinterland states has been condemned as a negative development.