Zvamaida Murwira
Herald Reporter
THE forthcoming Non Aligned Movement summit set for Iran next month should be used as an opportunity to reinvigorate the organisation, President Mugabe said yesterday.

He said the West has taken advantage of NAM’s inactivity to attack Third World countries.
The Head of State and Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces said the NAM summit in Tehran should be a platform to reflect and come with strategies to repel machinations by the West against developing countries.

The President said this during a meeting with Iran special envoy Dr Reza Taghipour at his Munhumutapa Offices. Dr Taghipour, who is also Minister of Information Communication and Technology, had come to deliver a message from the Iranian President, Mr Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to his counterpart, President Mugabe, inviting him to the NAM summit.

“We have not been meeting sufficiently. We have allowed NAM to be that inactive and one hopes that this meeting will reinvigorate NAM,” said the President.
He bemoaned the treatment given to Third World countries by the West saying they were giving second citizen status. Developing countries were denied equal membership to international bodies because of the arrogance by the West, said the President.

Zimbabwe, he said, supported Iran’s nuclear programme for its energy, which is being opposed by the United States and the West on the basis that Tehran wanted to manufacture nuclear bombs.

“But even if you were going in that direction, the people who are afraid, say that you might be undertaking nuclear bombs, they are saying ‘we have the bombs but you can’t have them’,” he said.

The President castigated the West and the US for its hypocrisy in that it did not want Iran to have nuclear bombs yet Washington had the weapons. He commended the bilateral relations between Zimbabwe and Iran saying it had grown from strength to strength.
“Our relations are not just country to country, but people to people and leaders to leaders . . . I am glad that we continue to build our relations from day-to -day, year-to-year,” he said.

President Mugabe criticised the sanctions imposed on Harare by the West.
“But we don’t mind, we criticise the sanctions as illegal,” he said.

Speaking to journalists soon after the meeting Dr Taghipour said co-operation between the two countries had significantly improved.
“We have signed a lot of instruments and Memorandum of Understanding which we have started implementing, very soon we will see the fruits,” said Dr Taghipour.

The special envoy was also accompanied by Iran’s ambassador to Zimbabwe, Mr Mohammad Pournajaf.
Foreign Affairs Minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi also attended yesterday’s meeting.