NAM, block politics outdated and irrelevant: US

Lalit K Jha

Washington, Sept 19 (PTI) America's top envoy to the
United Nations said Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and other
cold-war era groupings are "outdated and irrelevant" and they
do not serve the interests of their member countries.

"These sorts of blocs and divisions are outdated. They
often don't serve the national interest of the countries that
participate in these blocs," Susan Rice told a press
conference here.

"Part of what we are beginning to see and certainly what
we think is essential, to tackle the challenges that I
described at the outset, is for countries to move beyond those
traditional reflexive bloc affiliations and look at ways to
step up individually and collectively to meeting 21st-century
security threats," she argued.

In response to a question, Rice said NAM is part of a
phenomenon where activity in the UN General Assembly has in
the past often broken down in the form of bloc politics:
Non-Aligned; sometimes Western and developed countries on the
other hand.

Rice's comment on NAM came while she was responding to a
question on China's role in the UN. A permanent member of the
Security Council, China has a big stake and is playing large
already at the UN, she said. "It acts in that role very much
in an active way. China is one of the countries with which we
work quite closely on the Security Council," she said.

China, she said, is also a major player in the General
Assembly, where it has traditionally come to work with and
sometimes on behalf of the NAM. PTI LKJ
DDC