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With the world's conflicts, chiefly war in Iraq, the Middle East and Sudan set to dominate discussions at the Non-Aligned Movement's (Nam) Conference in Durban, South Africa hopes to steer the discussions towards achieving "durable" solutions to these problems.

Director-General of Foreign Affairs Dr Ayanda Ntsabula yesterday said South Africa had made intensive inputs into draft document to be discussed at the conference, which opens today.

Ntsaluba said this week's conference would review progress made since the last summit in Malaysia and also make preparation for the forthcoming summit in Cuba in 2006.

However, like the World Racism Conference, which took place in 2001, discussions in this conference are set to be dominated by raging conflicts in the world.

There is a greater concern within Nam following the unilateral invasion of Iraq by the USA-led coalition forces that the culture of approaching resolution to conflicts through multilateralism was diminishing.

Developing nations feel this undermines the role of United Nations and reverses gains made in the past century where conflicts were increasingly being resolved through negotiations.

"Ministers will on Thursday make contributions on the call made by UN Secretary-General (Kofi Annan) to reform the United Nations", said Ntsaluba.

South Africa has made an intensive input into a Conference Draft Document to be discussed by Nam senior officials.

Ntsaluba said South Africa's input in the document focused on "the difficult areas" around the issue of disarmament and global terrorism.

"Of course we expect robust discussions on Iraq, the Israelis/Palestinian conflict ", said Ntsaluba, who added that South Africa did not believe that the "security wall" being built by the Israelis was "desirable".

"We also do not believe it will contribute to what it desires to do. The challenge now is what could be done to advance the goal of peace in the Middle East. We need to balance between what is possible and what we emotionally want to see.

"We are not looking at short terms solutions in the Middle East but at something more durable", said Ntsaluba.

The Nam has also established a 16-nation committee to see how peace could be brought about in the Middle East.

On the conflict on Sudan's Darfur region, Ntsaluba said South Africa was fully behind African Union's position, which favoured an intervention and dialogue with Khartoum.

Ntsabula said everything was "on track" with South Africa and Durban ready to receive the delegates. In total there would be 80 ministers leading delegations to the Nam conference with other remaining countries to be led by their high-ranking government officials.

President Thabo Mbeki will on Thursday address the opening ceremony of the Nam Ministerial Conference. A two-day meeting of ministers and officials of the Asian-African Sub-Regional Organisations Conference (AASROC) will follow the Nam meeting immediately.

AASROC was established to "revive the spirit of co-operation between the two continents". – BuaNews.

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