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t the height of his rule in 1992, then president Soeharto proudly hosted a summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in Jakarta, in what is now the Jakarta Convention Center.

On Wednesday, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono opened the group’s ministerial meeting as a part of NAM’s 50th anniversary celebrations, with Indonesia now part of the world’s 20 largest economies.

President Susilo Bambang Yu-dhoyono echoed Soeharto’s determination 19 years ago that Indonesia would lead struggling developing nations to play major roles on the world stage.

“As we mark our achievements this is also a good time for all of us to determine how the Non-Aligned Movement can be a greater force for peace, justice and prosperity in the 21st century,” Yudhoyono told NAM participants

Founded in Belgrade at the height of the Cold War in 1961, the organization was the brainchild of Yugoslavia’s president Josip Broz Tito, India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Egypt’s second president Gamal Abdel Nasser, Ghana’s first president Kwame Nkrumah and Indonesia’s first president Sukarno.

All five leaders were prominent advocates of a middle path for states in the developing world between the Western and Eastern blocs during the Cold War.

The movement, which boasts of being the driving force in easing Cold War tensions as well as ending colonization and apartheid, now claims to be the largest political bloc within the United Nations (UN), with 120 members after Azerbaijan and Fiji were accepted as NAM’s newest members on Wednesday.

While most agree with the need for UN reform, member countries — from poor African nations to affluent small countries like Singapore to conflicting states like India and Pakistan or emerging giants like China — starkly differ in how they want to reform the world body, even after 20 years of discussing the issue.

All NAM’s big boys, for instance, competed to become permanent members of the UN Security
Council.

“I think one of the best lessons from the past — and our future — is this: It is not enough for our movement just to be a ‘moral force’. Our conscience must be a weapon that we can effectively use on a wide range of issues in the international agenda.

“The Non-Aligned Movement already has the power of numbers — 118 member states. But, how do we convert that power into collective influence?” Yudhoyono said.

He said that the size of NAM alone did not automatically translate into power. “It is the weight of our political and socio-economic achievements, the quality of our activism and the power of our ideas that ultimately define our success as a movement.”

Many said the difficulty of unity had caused NAM to lose most of its credibility and political weight in fighting for the interests of the developing nations they represent.

However, UN General Assembly president Joseph Deiss stressed that NAM’s diversity could be a useful feature of the bloc.

“I am convinced that its diversity is a unique asset for NAM, as it can be a crucial platform for exchanging views and forging consensus. I therefore call on NAM to continue to be active in the global debate and to assist in shaping a global governance system that is efficient, representative and open,” he said.