Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi has pledged his country's further solidarity and cooperation with other developing nations to bring lasting peace and prosperity to the world.

"It is the adamant policy of the Chinese government to further strengthen solidarity and cooperation with the developing countries, Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) members included," he said at the 14th Ministerial Conference of the 116-member NAM, which opened on Thursday morning in Durban, a coastal city in South Africa.

Wang, who was attending the one-day meeting as an observer, said China and other developing countries have stood together in adversity and supported each other.

"China will, as always, dedicate itself to promoting multilateralism, strengthening unity and cooperation with the developing countries and bringing lasting peace and security, development and prosperity to the world," he told foreign ministers at the meeting.

The 14th NAM ministerial conference, with the theme "Challenges for Multilateralism in the 21st Century," comes at a time when the threat of large-scale international terrorism made it clear that multilateral cooperation is the only way to grapple with trans-national challenges of global peace and security, and when progress on the development goals, agreed to at major international conferences over the past years, needs to be accelerated.
 
Almost all major issues around the world, such as Israel's construction of a separation barrier in the West Bank, will be considered by the participants.

Other specific topics to be discussed at the meeting include post conflict peace-building activities, terrorism, peaceful settlement of disputes, North-South dialogue, South-South cooperation, external debt, and food security.

A statement, called the Final Document, will be adopted at the end of the meeting, putting forward NAM's positions on the issues.

NAM, the largest political grouping outside the United Nations, mainly consisting of developing countries, originated in a 1955 meeting of 29 Asian and African countries, at which heads of state discussed issues of common concern including colonialism and the influence of the West.

The principles of the movement, including "respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all nations," and "settlement of all international disputes by peaceful means in conformity with the United Nations Charter," remain valid more than 40 years later.

China is one of the 29 participants of the 1955 Asia-Africa Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, which led to the establishment of NAM in 1961. It became an observer to NAM in 1992.

(Xinhua News Agency August 20, 2004)