NAM summit ‘backs right to peaceful nuclear energy’

AFP/Tehran

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Foreign Minister Ali-Akbar Salehi review the final document of the NAM summit in Tehran yesterday

Iran yesterday closed a summit of non-aligned states after two days of sometimes conflicting speeches over Syria and stepped-up pressure over its nuclear programme that overshadowed the proceedings. Representatives from the 120 members of the Non-Aligned Movement adopted a document that condemned unilateral sanctions, backed the right of Iran and other states to peaceful nuclear energy, and supported the creation of a Palestinian state, Iranian media reported. The document also reportedly advocated nuclear disarmament, human rights free from political agendas and opposition to racism and “Islamophobia”. The text was not available late yesterday on the foreign ministry website dedicated to the summit. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad chaired the closing ceremony, reflecting his country’s presidency of the NAM for the next three years, after which it will pass to Venezuela. With around 30 heads of state or government attending, and senior officials filling out the other two-thirds of the heavily secured hall, Iran portrayed the summit as a triumph over Western attempts to isolate it over its disputed nuclear activities. Ahmadinejad said the summit was “unique in quality and in the number of participants”. But Iran’s hopes of boosting its international prestige by hosting the summit were tripped up by a critical new UN nuclear watchdog report, analysts said. The event, however, “enabled Iran to show it still has friends and trade partners despite international efforts to isolate it”, one analyst, Dina Esfandiary of Britain’s International Institute for Strategic Studies, said. Smack in the middle of the summit, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released its latest report on Iran that recorded an increase in the number of uranium enrichment centrifuges. And it said a clean-up at a suspect military base in Parchin had “hampered” IAEA inspectors’ ability to determine whether explosives tests for warheads had taken place. That paired with UN chief Ban Ki-moon in Tehran telling summit delegates and Iranian leaders that they had to comply with IAEA and UN resolutions, or else Iran faced being excluded from the international community and even risked war from Israel or the US. “Sometimes the timing of international summits make all the difference, and this was one of those occasions,” said Mark Hibbs, a senior nuclear issues analyst at the Carnegie Endowment. “Iran opened by declaring that its peaceful nuclear programme was the victim of a P5 (UN Security Council) conspiracy, but that narrative ran aground on the IAEA’s finding—announced right in the middle of the meeting—that Iran has prevented the IAEA from doing its work.” That, and Ban’s remarks, meant “Iran didn’t win this round”, he said. The Islamic Republic was further embarrassed by statements from Ban condemning its leaders’ anti-Israel remarks, and by him and Egypt’s new President Mohamed Mursi—whom Iran has been reaching out to—strongly criticising the Syrian regime, a staunch ally of Iran. Esfandiary, though, said “Iran knew that it would inevitably get some bad press” from those high-profile invitees. “But Iran judged the benefits of the PR coup to outweigh the negatives. Iran will, for example, play on its tolerance for criticism and its ability to make friends despite differences and detract attention from the release of the IAEA report,” she said. Alireza Nader, a senior analyst at the US group Rand Corp, said: “I don’t think NAM really enhances Iran’s regional or international position in the long term. “It may boost the Iranian regime’s image for a little while, but Iran faces a fundamental clash of interests with other NAM states.” Supporting that argument, Nader pointed to Mursi’s speech and the decision by major NAM power India to cut back its purchases of Iranian oil in line with US sanctions. “The NAM summit will not erase pressures the regime faces due to its violation of international norms and its repressive behaviour at home,” he said.