The President of Sri Lanka leaves next week for the Non-Aligned Summit, but not many really know that it is being held in the port-city of Sharm-el-Sheik of Egypt, and even if they did, not many would probably care.

The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) was an exciting new development among a bloc of countries spread out from Latin America to Asia and Africa becoming independent sovereign nations in the immediate post-World War II period.

It is to the then Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru that the name 'Non-alignment' is credited when he spoke on the subject at a preparatory meeting in Colombo in 1954, at a time he was facing difficulties with China. The movement was based on the doctrine of pancha seela and was meant to be the third bloc in the Cold War years.

Sri Lanka was a key player in the early years, and to Sirimavo Bandaranaike must go the eternal credit of putting this little country then known as Ceylon, on the world map. The 1976 summit of 101 world leaders in Colombo was the highpoint of her foreign policy.

What was unfortunate was that her speech at the United Nations General Assembly referring to the "rapacious West" and the "tyranny of the minority" and her conduct of foreign relations was such that it heavily aligned itself politically with the countries that had made friends with the then Soviet Union precisely because of their antagonism with the haughty attitude of the economically better-off US and the West, and thereby ruptured friendly links with them in the process.

The end result was that domestic troubles began at home. The West did not want to help Sri Lanka, and the NAM bloc could not. The then Opposition was able to profit from the economic woes that were heaped on the people, and after holding such a successful world summit in Colombo, Ms. Bandaranaike and her government faced a thumping defeat at the general elections only the following year. It was said of Ms. Banadaranaike's legacy that she ruled over 2/3rds of the world, but lost by 2/3rds at home. What a fall it was; from the zenith of her popularity in 1976 to the depths she found herself in 1977.

It was also the beginning of the end of NAM. The West had been prodding and poking trying to destabilise the movement and make it an impotent force in the conduct of world affairs.

NAM displayed glimpses of solidarity from time to time in the early years of UNCTAD negotiations and on the Law of the Sea, but today pull in different directions, for example at the World Trade Organization (WTO) discussions.

Grouplets have emerged within the developing world undermining third world solidarity in a scramble to economically link with the big powers. For instance, we now have a BRIC - which brings together Brazil, Russia, India and China and a G22 which brings together the G8 group from developed countries with 14 developing countries which have left the rest behind.
Sri Lanka was one of the countries that veered away from NAM in the 1980s when it broke ranks at the UN and voted with Britain over the Falklands issue. Then President J.R. Jayewardene asked "what do we get from Argentina?" (when Britain had given us the Victoria dam). Modern day Sri Lanka has also deserted non-aligned solidarity for its own sake. Despite her rock-like support for the Palestinian cause, we do business with Israel.

In this backdrop, Sri Lanka probably cannot remain sentimentally attached to a bloc that is to a great extent not knowing how to make itself a potent force in world affairs - or disband.

No doubt the country received massive bloc support from NAM member-states at the recent UN Human Rights Council sessions when the Western countries ganged up against Sri Lanka.

It was rather pathetic the way those European nations went about hounding a country that was on the verge of - and eventually succeeded in - eliminating a terrorist outfit that held the country and its people to ransom and economic regression for three decades. It was almost as if they did not want Sri Lanka to defeat terrorism, because they would then lose their hold on a struggling nation.

Bitter at the snub they got in not listening to their unjustifiable demands to halt the military offensive, they have now begun to exert economic pressure on the country obstructing its efforts at rehabilitation and reconstruction.

And yet, this is not a reason for Sri Lanka to adopt the foreign policy it is pursuing right now; one of reciprocal animosity to the West - and yet, at the same time hoping that dollar loans will come from international lending institutions that are firmly in the grip of the US and the West.

According to the Central Bank's 2008 report, the West continued to be the main destination of Sri Lanka's exports - the US alone accounted for 23% of exports. The US is the highest buyer of Sri Lankan goods followed by Britain, Italy, Belgium and then, India, Germany, the UAE, Russia and France. Britain has the second largest number of tourists coming here.

In the backdrop of the President attending a mere showpiece conference - a talk shop of platitudes and pronouncement that mean little or nothing, there is a need to put those animosities behind, and move on; to rebuild bridges with the West so that the ordinary people don't have to undergo the anguish they went through in the early 1970s once again. 'A friend of all and enemy of none' should be the golden thread that runs through the foreign policy credo of Sri Lanka.