NAM Summit Kicks off with Meeting of Senior Officials

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, February 20, 2003

NAM Summit Kicks off with Meeting of Senior Officials

The 13th summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) officially kicked off Thursday in Kuala Lumpur with the Senior Officials Meeting(SOM) at the Putra World Trade Center.

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The 13th summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) officially kicked off Thursday in Kuala Lumpur with the Senior Officials Meeting(SOM) at the Putra World Trade Center.

Police put up tight security around the venue and elsewhere in the capital as delegates streamed in to address issues expected to take center stage at the summit scheduled for Feb. 24-25.

Police sources said an additional 8,000 security personnel have been deployed in the capital to ensure the security for the summit, the biggest ever summit in Malaysia.

The SOM meeting is to be followed by a foreign ministerial level meeting.

Visitors arriving in the city seemed hardly twitchy about the presence of heavily armed security personnel.

Many thought nothing of the security officers' presence with walkie-talkies or accompanying groups of formally-dressed officials.

"I thought this (so many security officers) is a normal situation because this is my first time here in Malaysia," said Terry Hudson, an American, when met at the airport today.

Hudson, who is here on vacation, said he was anxious about the level of high security checks upon arrival at the airport.

However, he was not worried about his safety while in Malaysia despite the possibility of a possible US attack on Iraq.

Delegations from 114 NAM member countries had already arrived since Monday to lay the ground work for the summit.

Delegates attending Thursday's meeting expressed commitment to ensuring the relevance of NAM.

The summit is set to see the largest gathering of leaders from NAM's 114 member nations since NAM's founding in 1961. Heads of state or government from at least 62 countries were expected to attend the summit that would focus on the Iraq crisis, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Pakistani-Indian relations and the war against terrorism.

In addition to these issues, the summit would consider forging links between the regional groupings in which NAM countries are members to boost their economic cooperation.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad said earlier: "These linkages should provide the avenues for mutually beneficial business collaboration."

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