Foreign ministers and officials of the 116-member Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) will discuss the issue of multilateralism and challenges of development during their meeting in South Africa's port city of Durban this week.

The NAM originated in a 1955 meeting of 29 Asian and African countries, at which heads of state discussed common concerns including colonialism and the influence of the West.

The organization's 14th ministerial conference is a "mid-term review" between the last heads of state and government summit in Malaysia last year and the next in Cuba in 2006. Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Wang Yi will lead a Chinese delegation to the meeting. China is one of 29 participants of the 1955 Asia-Africa Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, which led to the establishment of NAM in 1961.

Multilateralism, the sidelining of the United Nations, and the challenges faced by the organization, will be a theme of this week's three-day meeting, which starts at Durban's International Convention Center on Aug. 17, according to South Africa's foreign ministry.

Also under discussion will be the UN's millennium development goals, which include halving poverty by 2015 and meeting significant education and health goals by the same date. A meeting of the NAM Committee on Palestine is scheduled on Wednesday and will be the first meeting of the committee since the International Court of Justice finding that Israel's building of a "security" wall in occupied Palestinian territory was a violation of international law.

At the 2003 summit, South African President and then NAM chairman Thabo Mbeki delivered a plea for peace, and for member countries to do everything possible to "protect and advance the principle and practice of multilateralism, against the tendency toward unilateralism," said a report of the South African Press Association.

The summit was dominated by the issue of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the possibility of United States-led invasion of that country.

Current preoccupations of NAM's members, most of them developing countries, include globalization, trade and investment, debt and HIV/AIDS. South Africa chaired NAM from 1998 to 2003, and Malaysia is the current chair.

The NAM meeting will be followed by a two-day meeting of the Asian-African Sub-Regional Organizations Conference (AASROC), also in Durban.

Established to "revive the spirit of cooperation between the two continents," the AASROC held its first meeting in Indonesia last year and was attended by delegates from 43 nations.

An AASROC ministerial working group that met in Durban in March this year decided to create an Asia-Africa Business Forum to focus on exploring business opportunities and promoting trade and investment.

The foreign ministry said this week's meeting is expected to "discuss specific modalities of cooperation between the two regions aiming to build a durable framework for inter-regional dialogue and cooperation."

The meeting will also discuss preparation for an AASROC summit in Bandung, Indonesia, in 2005, which will mark the anniversary of the 1955 Asia-Africa Conference.

(Xinhua News Agency August 16, 2004)