NAM ministerial meeting begins

TEHRAN: The 15th meeting of Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) foreign ministers opened Tuesday morning with the inaugural speech of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The 118 member states, 15 observer members, and eight international and regional organizations are attending the meeting.

The NAM members, especially its founders and influential members such as Iran, are determined to discuss in the Tehran meeting ways and strategies to upgrade capacity of and revitalize the world's major body.

Formed in the climax of the World War II to stand up to NATO and Warsaw treaty members, NAM started to forge convergence among states, that were later labeled as the Non-Aligned states.

The NAM states started to converge in a conference in Bandung, the provincial capital of West Java, Indonesia.

The Bandung Conference was a meeting of Asian and African states, most of which were newly independent, organized by Egypt, Indonesia, Burma, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), India and Pakistan.

The NAM is an international organization of over 118 states, which consider themselves not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc.

The NAM group of states - as Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said in his speech in the Movement's experts session in Tehran - faces big challenges in terms of peace, security, economic development, social progress and respect for rule of law.