President Yoweri Museveni on Wednesday left for Tehran to attend the 120-member 16th Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) three-day summit that is taking place in Iran. The organization has 17 countries with observer status.

We bring you the President’s speech at the Tehran Summit. On his departure for Tehran, the president was seen off at Entebbe International Airport by the Inspector General of the Air Force Commander, Major General Jim Ow’oyesigire and the Commissioner Genera of Prisons, Dr. Johnson Byabashaija.

Highlights of the Tehran Summit

At the Tehran Summit, Iran is taking over from Egypt as chair of the Non-Aligned Movement for the period 2012 to 2015. The member countries of the Non-Aligned Movement represent nearly two thirds of the United Nations’ members and contain 55% of the total world population.

Membership of NAM is particularly concentrated in countries considered to be developing or part of the Third World.

The organization was founded in Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1961 and was largely the brainchild of Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito, India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, Egypt’s second President, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Ghana’s first President, Kwame Nkrumah and Indonesia’s first President, Sukarno.

All the five leaders were advocates of a middle course for states in the developing world between the Western and Eastern blocs in the Cold War era after the Second World War.