Sudanese, Lebanese Presidents to Attend NAM Summit in Tehran

Sudan’s President Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir and Lebanese President Michel Suleiman are scheduled to visit Tehran next week to attend the 16th heads-of-state summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).

Bashir, heading a high ranking Sudanese delegation, will arrive in Tehran next week. Sudan’s foreign minister will also accompany Bashir in his visit to Tehran.

Meantime, Lebanese media reports announced that the country’s President Michel Suleiman will also visit Tehran on August 29 to attend the summit meeting.

Lebanese, al-Intiqad website said that Suleiman will hold a separate meeting with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the sidelines of the NAM summit.

Developments in Syria are said to be on the agenda of the talks between Ahmadinejad and Suleiman.

Iran announced on Saturday that 100 world states have announced their preparedness to participate in the NAM summit despite enemies’ attempts to prevent the presence of certain guests in the conference.

“The presence of 100 NAM members in Tehran is for sure, thus far,” Director-General of the Iranian Presidential Office for International Affairs Mohammad Reza Forqani told reporters in a press conference in Tehran at the time.

Forqani, who is Iran’s spokesman for the NAM summit, said that 41 countries have stressed their readiness to attend the conference at the highest level so far, adding that 27 members will participate in the meeting at the level of foreign ministers, 5 states at the level of first vice-president and one country at the level of parliament speaker.

The 16th NAM summit will be held in the Iranian capital, Tehran, from August 26 to 31.

NAM is comprised of some 120 member states and 17 observer countries.

NAM is an international organization of states considering themselves not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc. NAM is the largest grouping of countries outside of the United Nations.

NAM member states represent nearly two-thirds of the United Nations’ members and comprise 55% of the world population, particularly countries considered to be developing or part of the Third World.

The movement is largely the brainchild of India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, former President of Egypt Jamal Abdul Nasser, and former Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito.

It was founded in April 1955 and has 118 members. The purpose of the organization as stated in the Havana Declaration of 1979 is to ensure “the national independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of non-aligned countries” in their “struggle against imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, racism, and all forms of foreign aggression, occupation, domination, interference or hegemony as well as against great power and bloc politics.”