President Thabo Mbeki has called upon the Non Aligned Movement (Nam) members to confront and address key challenges that face their countries.

Addressing the 14th Nam Ministerial Meeting in Durban yesterday, Mbeki said poverty, underdevelopment and international terrorism were the main impediments to the Nam objectives for development.

He said the challenges of poverty and underdevelopment that continued to affect millions of people ought to be addressed within the Nam and the United Nations context.

"We as Nam members do not need to continuously repeat what we have agreed on previously but to go ahead and see what we need to do next," the President said.

More than 1 400 delegates from various countries are attending the 14th Nam Ministerial and AASROC Conferences that end this week.

Mbeki called on Nam members to put more effort into promoting international peace and stability.

"As member countries we need to achieve peace and stability to oversee the restructuring of global power, political, economic and social power and this could only be achieved within a global context," the President said.

Mbeki said countries needed to work together to confront challenges within a global context, such as the conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Somalia and Sudan.

“We need to ensure that we strengthen our relations among ourselves and work together. The strengthening of the South-South relations, the strengthening of regional organisations and decisions must be taken to strengthen organs such as the African Union, the Arab League, the Caricom and the Nam," he said.

He called on the United Nations and Nam members to act swiftly to bring peaceful solutions to the Iraq, Palestine and Israel conflicts.

"Nam countries need to find common agreements and positions to bring the context within agreed goals and objectives. We should as Nam make assessments of our conferences to check on principle our results and what we need to do and whether our decisions make impact on the lives of millions of people that we represent," the President said.

Mbeki said among them would be the Millennium Development Goals that were aimed at reducing poverty and inequality through channelling resources from the rich to the poor so that a large part of the population could benefit. – BuaNews.