The last Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in South Africa five years ago ended well into the night - even as the last speaker took the rostrum, workers were already cleaning up the convention hall and removing the chairs.

It appeared that just about everyone wanted to have their say, and with over 100 participating member nations, the two-day meeting was simply too short for the delegates to mull over weighty issues such as global disarmament and the economic turmoil roiling the world.

But NAM - the biggest international organisation outside of United Nations - was never meant to be a talk shop.

It was suppose to be an alliance of Third World nations fighting for a new world order based o­n equity, justice and peace. It was this cherish dream of a world free from oppression and colonialism which had drawn countries together to Bandung, Indonesia in 1955.

Bandung was indeed a historical milestone. Some of Third World leading lights were there - Indonesia's Sukarno, India's Jawaharlal Nehru, Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah, Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, China's Chou En Lai and Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh.

No wonder, they struck fear in Western capitals for the Third World had finally found the courage and conviction to cut the umbilical cord which tied them to their former colonial masters.

A free world

The Bandung meeting inspired the formation of a Third World coalition six years later. Its aim: to strut an independent path o­n the global stage, o­ne which is not enamoured to the first world of industrialised countries led by the United States and the second world under the socialist orbit of the Soviet Union.

Its agenda was decolonisation, a new international economic order and global disarmament.

Four decades later, the dream of a free world for the majority of humankind remains unfulfilled. In fact, the global situation has grown worse.

Today, justice still eludes global citizens: the US - the sole remaining superpower - is clearly the judge, jury and executioner o­n international affairs.

There is still no genuine peace. War afflicts millions of people around the world. Even as NAM meets in Kuala Lumpur this week - its 13th summit - the US and its allies are meticulously planning a war against Iraq.

And there is definitely no equity: the disparity between rich and poor nations - the global apartheid, so to speak - has reached to obscene proportions.

Worse still, the world is undergoing a new wave of colonialism. The new masters are the international corporations and their governments.

Despite decades of post-war economic growth, more and more countries are becoming indebted to rich nations. This new colonialism is aided by the powerful World Trade Organisation, which works for the interests of not global citizens, but global investors.

NAM has failed

Clearly, NAM has failed, and failed spectacularly. o­ne reason for such a sad state of affairs is because the organisation has been rudderless. South Africa's Nelson Mandela had offered hope to many when he was elected to lead the organisation five years ago. But he was a great disappointment.

As host, it is now Malaysia's turn to take the helm. There is much for us to do.

NAM must find solutions to the root cause of global conflict, terrorism and instability - the widening gap between the rich and the poor.

We need to break the vicious cycle of the debilitating Third World debt which condemns citizens to servicing their nation's debt for generations to come.

We know too well that globalisation and trade liberalisation, as noted in NAM's last communique, do not bring better economic opportunity for Third World nations, but instead increased poverty and inequality.

We should also find answers to how the majority of countries which are not in the global investors' radar meet their basic needs.

In short, NAM must engineer a global revolution. That's a tall order. But can Malaysia lead?

Don't bet of it. A country which brook no dissent internally has little credibility to talk about global democracy. And that's true for many NAM members.

Insignificant body

Indeed, NAM is so insignificant today that Bangladesh, the original host of this summit, has opted to bail out. Jordan, too, declined when given the opportunity. Malaysia was eventually picked as a last-minute stand-in.

NAM, apart from discussing the impending war in Iraq, will spend much of its time in this summit to do some navel gazing. True, previous summits had addressed the problem of revitalising the global movement, but time is running out.

Kuala Lumpur is perhaps the last chance for NAM to save itself before it can save the world.

More likely, however, when the last speech is made at the summit next week - and the chairs removed from the conference hall in the Putra World Trade Centre - the world has come to Kuala Lumpur to bury an organisation which has long lost its relevancy.