One hundred and one nations from Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America gathered at the Zimbabwean capital of Harare for the Eighth Non-Aligned Summit meeting. After deliberating for four days (September 2-6), all parties at the conference clearly understood that the movement for non-alignment with the world's two major military blocs was not only toothless in its ability to enforce any of its decisions but also more divided than at any other period in its 25-year history.
The concept of non-alignment was developed nearly 40 years ago by a small number of nations that wished to remain "not aligned" with the two great power blocs that were emerging at that time--the United States and the Soviet Union. In those early days the term embraced nations that objected to any kind of political or economic association for war purposes--military blocs, military alliances, and the like. Today, while seeking security through peace and not peace through security, the non-aligned nations see their power, with all its diffuse diversity, as a moral force--a force that draws its strength from public opinion through consensus--rather than as a military or economic force.
At the Harare summit it was the total failure of the non-aligned nations' often fragile unity that led many experts and observers to comment that the movement had ceased to be even a moral force that could exert pressure upon the two superpowers. As each day of the summit proceeded, it was clear by the tone of the long-winded speeches that the movement had become significantly divided. Even the exhortations of the movement's top leaders, including Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Rajiv Gandhi of India, Spyros Kyprianou of Cyprus, and Mahathir Bin Mohammed of Malaysia, generated little resolve among the 101 gathered nations to agree on a variety of issues.
In his thunderous 90-minute speech, by far the longest delivered at the conference, Iranian President Sayed Ali Khamenei demanded that the movement expel fellow non-aligned state Iraq and attacked the United States for trying to replace "the present Soviet forces occupying Afghanistan with its own forces." Mugabe, the newly elected chairperson of the movement, urged Khamenei to exercise restraint, but his appeals were of no use. While Khamenei attacked Iraq, oblivious to his colleagues' sensitivities, his official press delegation flooded the press galleries with expensively printed pamphlets bearing pictures of Iranian soldiers allegedly maimed and wounded by Iraqi chemical weapons. For several moments following Khamenei's speech, the 2,000 or so delegates and the 1,000 members of the press did not know which shock to react to first--Khamenei's bitter attack on Iraq and the non-aligned movement, or the pamphlets showing dying Iranian soldiers.
But the flashiest entrance and the most stunning blow to the movement was delivered by Libya's incorrigible Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, who landed in Harare with panache. A fleet of seven Boeing 727s carried his wife, his 100 high-heeled machine-gun-toting female bodyguards, and a contingent of 1,400 security personnel. The colonel himself flew in his own Boeing 747, which also contained his bullet-proof Lincoln Continental limousine. Qaddafi chose to land in Harare in the middle of the night, thus throwing into chaos the welcoming reception planned by Zimbabwean officials, who had been left to guess his arrival plans for the previous 48 hours. Without notice, the air control tower in Harare was told that the Libyan leader was on his way; minutes later, the fleet of
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