ifda dossier 74 - Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

mentioned that a non-governmental movement, the Afro-Asian Peoples'
Solidarity Organization (AAPSO 9), and its many affiliate organizations,
were able to organize conferences and meetings for a ten year period,
1957 to 1967, after which it too came to cn end when its main backers,
Russia and China, were in the bitter throes of their clash, the now well-
known Sino-Soviet split which marked the international relations of the
1960s.
The Nro-Asian movement had a successor in another kind of group,
the NAM, which had its roots in the strong sentiments surrounding the
recent achievement of national independence by the emergent states of
Asia and Africa. There were also others seeking to assert their self-
determination and independence from the two world blocs - Yugoslavia
under Tito being the prominent example of a non Afro-Asian nation
actively promoting the NAM. After the resounding success of Bandung,
non-alignment has received a great boost with a perceptible lessening
of world tension and an improvement of the international climate.8 In
1961, when there appeared to be an intensification of the Cold War,
Tito, together with Nasser of Egypt, sponsored a conference of non-
aligned countries "for the purpose of consolidating world peace,
safeguarding the independence of all nations and eliminating the danger
of intervention in their affairs".10 Thus, the first conference of Heads
of State and Government of Non-Aligned Countries was held in
Belgrade in 1961. At that time, the NAM started with 21 members with
the numbers increasing substantially subsequently so that by the 1980s,
approximately four-fifths of the Third World countries have become
members of the NAM.11
The NAM cannot claim to share a unanimous definition of non-
alignment except in very minimalist terms, i.e. formal non-adherence
to any bloc in the form of military alliances or pacts. Thus, it too has
suffered from the Afro-Asian Bloc's lack of affinity by way of a shared
ideology. Nonetheless, it has survived into the 1980s mainly by
identifying a new basis for cooperation, namely a focus on collaboration
in the economic sphere such that it has been said to resemble a trade
union of the Third World.12
What NAM did develop, in addition to its changed and broadened
orientation, is an organizational framework enabling it to actively and