DIPLOMACY: Welcome to the Third World

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For three days last week one 21 -gun salute after another boomed out over Algiers' Dar el Beida international airport, as kings, presidents and dictators arrived from all over the Third World.

There was gray-bearded Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, one of the world's longest-reigning monarchs, and Fidel Castro of Cuba, still the archetypal revolutionary in his olive-drab uniform. There, too, was King Feisal of Saudi Arabia, exiled Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia, President Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of India and scores of others.

After the airport greeting by Algerian President Houari Boumedienne, each of the visiting heads of state (59 in all, plus representatives from 17 other nations) was driven off to the elegant Club des Pins, a seaside resort above the Mediterranean. Atop each white stucco villa flew the standard of its occupant, making the resort look like some encampment of medieval knights about to go into combat.

The dignitaries had not come to Algiers for combat, however. They were there to attend the fourth Summit Conference of Non-Aligned Countries, a loose-knit organization formed in 1961 during the heat of the cold war by Tito, Egypt's Gamal Nasser and India's Jawaharlal Nehru. Then, the foremost aim of the conference had been to seek means by which the smaller and poorer nations of the world could protect themselves from political and economic encroachment by the superpowers.

The Economic Theme. Nasser and Nehru are both gone now, and the international climate has changed as well. One major question facing the leaders in Algiers: Do détente and the relaxation of tensions among the big powers invalidate the need for a policy of nonalignment? Or does détente serve to reinforce the status quo—that is, a world of a few strong nations and many weak ones—and hence make the need for a coordinated policy all the more imperative? Apparently hoping to offset such a conclusion. Soviet Party Leader Leonid Brezhnev sent a message to Boumedienne arguing that the issue was not between big and small or rich and poor but "between the forces of socialism and reaction."

The Algerian President tactfully made no public reply. But Brezhnev's thesis did not exactly fit the mood of the assembly. As Algeria's leading Arabic daily Al Chaab observed on the eve of the conference: "Nowadays the division is between rich (the others) and poor (us)." In his keynote speech, Boumedienne hammered on the economic theme. He charged that the colonial powers have used Third World raw materials for their own enrichment and castigated both the maneuverings of multinational companies and the monetary crises created by big-power policies. After calling for a common monetary policy among developing nations, he concluded: "Our political independence will remain illusory unless we achieve a true economic liberation." In a draft economic declaration, the Algerian delegation went on to spell out a kind of couscous brand of nonalignment; it urged recognition of the right of Third World countries to nationalize foreign companies and a redefinition of the role of the World Bank so that its financial resources would be more equitably distributed.