Non-Aligned summit Opens in Sharm el-Sheikh

SHARM EL-SHEIKH (Egypt) - A fifty world leaders gathered Wednesday morning to discuss the global financial crisis

• A fifty world leaders gathered Wednesday morning to discuss the global financial crisis, the first day of a summit of Non-Aligned Movement should be overshadowed by an expected meeting between India and Pakistan.
  
      The head of Indian diplomacy Shiv Shankar Menon met Tuesday his Pakistani counterpart Salim Bashir, before the planned meeting between Prime Minister of Pakistan, Yousuf Raza Gilani and his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh in the margins of the two-day summit in the Egyptian resort Sharm el-Sheikh on the Red Sea.
  
      Relations between the two neighbours have sharply deteriorated after the attacks in Bombay, which made 174 deaths, including nine of the ten assailants in November 2008 and were imputed by New Delhi to a Pakistani armed group with the complicity of military intelligence services of Islamabad.
  
      Established in 1955, during the Cold War, the Non-Aligned Movement sought to distance from east and west blocks. Today, after the collapse of the USSR and the disruption of equilibrium, its existence is in question.
  
      It includes 53 African, 38 Asian, 26 Latin American and Caribbean and one European. Sixteen countries and nine organizations have the observer status.
  
  Ennaharonline/ M. O.