1st Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement
1961 Belgrade summit conference
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Summit Conference of Heads of State or Government of the Non-Aligned Movement (Serbo-Croatian: Конференција шефова држава или влада несврстаних земаља / Konferencija šefova država ili vlada nesvrstanih zemalja, Macedonian: Конференција на шефови на држави или влади на неврзани земји, Slovene: Konferenca voditeljev držav ali vlad neuvrščenih držav) on 1–6 September 1961 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia was the first conference of the Non-Aligned Movement.[1] A major contributing factor to the organization of the conference was the process of decolonization in a number of African countries in the 1960s.[1] Some therefore called it the "Third World's Yalta" in reference to 1945 Yalta Conference.[1]
| Summit Conference of Heads of State or Government of the Non-Aligned Movement | |
|---|---|
 | |
 Meeting at the House of the National Assembly | |
| Host country | Yugoslavia |
| Date | 1–6 September 1961 |
| Cities | Belgrade |
| Venues | House of the National Assembly |
| Participants |  Afghanistan
 Yugoslavia |
| Chair | Josip Broz Tito (President of Yugoslavia) |
| Follows | Bandung Conference[citation needed] |
| Precedes | 2nd Summit (Cairo, United Arab Republic) |
Twenty-five countries in total participated in Belgrade Conference, whilst 3 countries – Bolivia, Brazil and Ecuador – were observers.[2][3] The preparatory meeting of Non-Aligned Countries took place earlier in 1961 in Cairo.[4] One of the issues which divided the newly independent countries was the Congo Crisis, which led to the creation of the conservative and anti-radical Brazzaville Group and the radical nationalist Casablanca Group.[1] All members of the Casablanca Group attended the conference, including Algeria, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Morocco and the United Arab Republic, whereas none of the Brazzaville Group was present.[1] The summit was followed by the 2nd Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Cairo in 1964. The 1962 Cairo Conference on the Problems of Developing Countries was a direct follow-up of the Belgrade summit, at which Brazil, Ethiopia, India, Senegal and Yugoslavia prepared for the upcoming UNCTAD conference of the ECOSOC.[5]
Conference
The Brijuni Islands, an archipelago in the Socialist Republic of Croatia, were initially considered to host the summit, after they hosted the Brioni Meeting of 1956. Belgrade was ultimately selected due to Brijuni's insufficient venues and concentration of the international communication and media facilities in the capital city of Yugoslavia.[6]
Vladimir Popović was the head of the Yugoslav State Committee for the Preparation of the Conference. The conference brought together 25 independent states. In addition, there were three states that had observer status, eleven socialist parties, trade unions from Japan and four other organizations. Socio-economic differences between participants were great and, from the beginning, participating states often showed different interests. Yugoslavia attached special importance to Latin American participation. The participation of these countries, along with the representatives of Europe, should have given the conference the character of a gathering where all parts of the world are represented, and avoid reduction to an Afro-Asian meeting as was case with some meetings before.[7]
President Tito only partially succeeded in bringing together all parts of the world to the conference. From Latin America, only Cuba was a full participant, while Bolivia, Brazil and Ecuador had observer status. The reason for that was the inability of these states to resist some pressure from the United States which wanted to preserve its role in the Western Hemisphere. The representatives of Yugoslavia were especially disappointed with Mexico's last minute cancelation. Of the European countries, only Cyprus and Yugoslavia as a host participated in the meeting.
The conference was followed by 1,016 journalists of which 690 were from abroad from 53 countries. The New York Times' Paul Hofmann described the event as a "paradise for cameramen".[8] Together, four Indian newspapers (The Times of India, The Hindu Madras, Indian Express and The Patriot) and four American newspapers (The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and The Christian Science Monitor) published 177,265 words about the conference in 7 days before, during and 7 days after the conference.[8]
Participants
Mohammed Daoud Khan, Prime Minister of Afghanistan
Benyoucef Benkhedda, Head of the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic
U Nu, Prime Minister of Burma
Norodom Sihanouk, Chief of State of Cambodia
Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Prime Minister of Ceylon
Cyrille Adoula, Prime minister of Congo-Léopoldville, Antoine Gizenga, Deputy Prime Minister, and Justin Bomboko, Minister of Foreign Affairs (Delegation of Congo-Léopoldville arrived in Belgrade on 4 September and took part only in the last two days of the Summit[9])
Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado, President of Cuba
Makarios III, President of Cyprus
Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia
Kwame Nkrumah, President of Ghana
Louis Lansana Beavogui, Foreign Minister of Guinea
Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister of India
Sukarno, President of Indonesia
Hashem Jawad, Foreign Minister of Iraq
Saeb Salam, Prime Minister of Lebanon
Modibo Keïta, President of Mali
Hassan II, King of Morocco
Mahendra, King of Nepal
Ibrahim bin Abdullah Al Suwaiyel, Foreign Minister of Saudi Arabia
Aden Adde, President of Somalia
Ibrahim Abboud, President of Sudan
Habib Bourguiba, President of Tunisia
Gamal Abdel Nasser, President of the United Arab Republic
Prince Seif el Islam el Hassan, Permanent representative of the Kingdom of Yemen in the United Nations
Josip Broz Tito, President of Yugoslavia
Observers
José Fellman, Minister of Education of Bolivia and Jorge Gutierrez Allendrebe, minister plenipotentiary
Franco Filho de Mello, Brazilian Ambassador to Switzerland
Jose Joaquin Silva, Ecuadorian Ambassador to West Germany
