Mansour Heads to Iran to Attend Non-Aligned Summit

Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour is scheduled to travel to Iran on Sunday to attend the summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).

President Michel Suleiman is set to travel to Tehran to attend the summit later next week.

Meanwhile, deputy Iranian Foreign Minister Hussein Amir Abdul Lahyan stated on Saturday that his country rejects the “negative repercussions the Syrian crisis is having on Lebanon.”

He made his remarks during a visit to Lebanon, which kicked off on Saturday by holding talks with Speaker Nabih Berri and later Prime Minister Najib Miqati on local and regional developments.

“We will continue to support the Lebanese republic as part of the axis of resistance and defiance” to Israel, he said during his meetings.

The NAM, born at the height of the Cold War as a grouping of nations that saw themselves as independent of both Washington and Moscow, counts 119 member states plus Palestine as members.

Other participating nations include Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Ghana, India, Iraq, Kuwait, Pakistan, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Zimbabwe.

Iran is presenting the summit as proof that it is not as isolated on the world stage as the United States has tried to portray.

On Sunday, a meeting of experts from NAM countries began a two-day meeting in Tehran to prepare for the summit. On Tuesday and Wednesday, foreign ministers from several of the countries are to develop that work ahead of the summit itself on Thursday and Friday.