By IANS
New Delhi : India has cautiously responded to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's remarks questioning the relevance of non-aligned movement in the post-Cold War world saying it's commitment to the NAM is "well-known."
"Our position on non-alignment is well known," external affairs ministry spokesperson Navtej Sarna told reporters when asked to comment on Rice's remarks at the 32nd anniversary celebrations of the United States India Business Council (USIBC) in Washington Thursday.
"And I know that there are some who still talk about non-alignment in foreign policy. But maybe that made sense during the Cold War when the world really was divided into rival camps," Rice said while exhorting India to "move past old ways of thinking" since the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) has lost its meaning.
"It has lost its meaning," she said, adding "one is aligned not with the interests and power of one bloc or another but with the values of a common humanity."
Instead, India should join fellow democracies in promoting common values of freedom and justice.
"Now the question that I would ask is, as fellow democracies with so many interests and principles in common at a time when people of every culture, every race, and every religion are embracing political and economic liberty, what is the meaning of non-alignment?"
"How can we not afford to join each other, on a global scale, to support opportunity and prosperity and justice and dignity and health and education and freedom and democracy?" she asked.
While going to Havana to attend the 14th NAM summit in September last year, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had asserted the relevance of non-aligned movement in the post-Cold War world saying it was a ''state of mind'' and urged the 116-member grouping to play a reconciling role in a "highly uncertain, insecure world."
"Non-alignment is a state of mind, to think independently about our options, to widen our developmental choices," Singh told journalists travelling with him on the flight from Brasilia to Havana.
"In that sense, non-alignment is as relevant today as it was before," he said.
India has been one of the founder members of non-alignment movement and has participated in virtually all the NAM summits since it was founded in Bandung in Indonesia in 1955.
For the past two years, especially since it struck a landmark nuclear deal with the US, India has stressed on independence of its foreign policy and asserted its commitment to the ideals of non-alignment to avoid the impression that it was becoming a camp follower of Washington.
India's growing strategic partnership with the US, that also includes comprehensive defence cooperation, has elicited sharp criticism from the leftist parties here that support the ruling coalition and left-leaning intellectuals who charge the government of capitulating to US imperialist designs.