BD reaffirms its trust in NAM relevance

Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali has said Bangladesh firmly believes in the continued relevance of Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in the changed global realities, reports UNB.

"We must assure that the groundswell of solidarity that nurtures our movement never dries up when the cause is just and legitimate," he said this while addressing the 17th Session of the Ministerial Meeting of the NAM Coordinating Bureau in Algiers, the capital of Algeria.

He said the essential plurality of NAM allows accommodating different dispensations within membership, based on mutual respect for each other's sovereign rights and equality.

"We're guided by the recognition that each one of our member states would have to find its own equilibrium and standing in the comity of nations at its own pace and terms," the Foreign Minister said.

At the outset of his speech, Mahmood Ali recalled the memory of father of the nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman who led Bangladesh to join the NAM at the Algiers Summit in 1973.

He echoed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's words at the 16th NAM Summit in Tehran in June, 2012 and urged the international community to keep working on reflecting the emerging global realities in the governing mechanisms of the key international institutions and processes.

Mahmood Ali observed that the global financial and economic crisis was a strong wake-up call to act upon this, but it seems there has been a reversal to business-as-usual. "This cannot be acceptable to those most vulnerable to the systemic failures that caused the crisis."

Focusing on the post-2015 sustainable development framework, the minister observed: "The agenda for peace and development are inter-linked, and stand to gain from their complementarities in delivering global public goods that we aspire to achieve."