Madam President,

Permit me to congratulate you on South Africa's Chairmanship of the Movement.

All of us have spelt out in some detail our national concerns in our statements in the General Debate. Here, therefore, I will only focus on one or two issues which are of particular concern to us as the Non-Aligned Movement.

The first question that we must address is the role of the Movement itself. I am not raising the superfluous: Do we need NAM? That is a settled question. In our view, more now than ever, we do need NAM to face the common challenges that continue to be faced by developing countries.

The question that I want to put is slightly different. Are we doing enough to set the agenda for international relations, or are we simply passive subjects? We represent the overwhelming majority of the United Nations, and it is our problems, whether political, economic or social, that form the bulk of the UN agenda. Unfortunately, however, it is not our views that really count or even find adequate reflection in the decisions. Others prescribe to us what we should do. We react, and very often do not even do that. We simply accept what gets prescribed for us.

Perhaps, because we have been passive, these prescriptions have become increasingly intrusive. An array of new norms is being set up, calling into question our perspectives, priorities, even national sovereignty. I would urge the Movement to examine very carefully the implications of all of these developments, and to forge a common position on them.

Because these external challenges are often beyond our capacity, as individual member states, to tackle on our own, it is particularly necessary that we maintain and reinforce our unity. We simply cannot permit ourselves to be distracted or divided by issues that are contentious within the Movement. We already have far too much to do together in trying to overcome our common difficulties.

That is why we oppose, on principle, attempts at establishing a conflict resolution mechanism for NAM. That is not a NAM priority. As the Secretary General has repeatedly reminded us, the vast majority of ongoing conflicts are not between the UN's member states. Instead, these are conflicts of an entirely different nature - driven by economic and social problems, or by international terrorism, or by complex emergencies. When the UN is moving away from a focus on conflicts between member states to these other complexities, and devising, as I have just said, methods of addressing them with consequences for all of us, it is doubly self-defeating for NAM to ignore these developments, invest its time and divide itself in a needless wrangle on an issue which is not needed, and which is so deeply controversial. I urge my colleagues to consider this carefully. The principle on which we should operate is to nourish what unites us, to eschew what separates us. As a group, we have enough pressing and momentous challenges before us, to concern ourselves with the inevitably unproductive.

Precisely because we need to be united, and because we should be able to subscribe completely to the decisions of the Movement, it is also absolutely essential that NAM's decisions should be taken, as they always have been by consensus. If attempts are made to push through decisions in any other way, the Movement will be weakened, because, instead of our focusing our attentions to the tasks that confront all of us, we would then be distracted by narrow and limited agendas. Even more importantly, if any of the Movement's decisions raises doubts in any Member's mind about its legitimacy, commitment to the Movement gets affected. Under South Africa's chairmanship, we are sure this will not happen. Nevertheless, this is a danger that we need to guard against, and I would urge, Madam President, that the traditions of the Movement, developed over the years, and maintained with good cause, be nurtured and protected. We need a strong, united Non-Aligned Movement, and we are sure that under your leadership this is what we will get.

Thank you, Madam President.