St Kitts and Nevis signs visa waiver with Burkina Faso and Gabon

St Kitts and Nevis: The Minister of Foreign Affairs of St Kitts and Nevis – Mark Brantley has signed formal diplomatic relations and visa waiver with the Foreign Minister of Burkina Faso – Alpha Barry.

The visa waiver and formal diplomatic relations have been signed-in the margins of the NAM – Non-Aligned Movement summit in Belgrade, the largest and the capital city of Serbia.

Both the counterparts also discussed various ways to enhance the bilateral relations between St Kitts and Nevis and Burkina Faso.

Apart from this, enhancing twin island bilateral ties, St Kitts and Nevis Foreign Minister signed a visa waiver with African nation Gabon.

Brantley tweeted, “Proud today to meet HE Pacôme Moubelet-Boubeya Foreign Minister of #Gabon and to sign a visa waiver agreement allowing the people of #Gabon and #StKitts #Nevis to move freely between our two countries as we deepen our relations with our ancestral home #Africa #DiplomacyMatters.”

About NAM –
NAM is a forum of – 120 developing world nations that are not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc. It is the largest grouping of nations worldwide after the United Nations.

The movement was originated in the 1950s as an effort by some nations to avoid polarized world of the – Cold War between the ‘pro-Soviet communist’ nations belonging to the – Warsaw Pact & the pro-American capitalist countries belonging to NATO.

Moving on the principles agreed at the Bandung Conference in 1955, the Non-Aligned Movement was established in 1961 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, via an initiative of the – Indian Prime Minister – Jawaharlal Nehru, Yugoslav President – Josip Broz Tito, Egyptian President – Gamal Abdel Nasser, Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah and Indonesian President Sukarno.

Fidel Castro enumerated the purpose of the organization in his Havana Declaration of 1979 as to make sure the national independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity & the security of non-aligned nations in their struggle against issues such as – imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, racism, & all forms of foreign aggression, occupation, domination, interference/hegemony as well as against great power and bloc politics.

The term – ‘Non-Alignment’ was used for the first time in the year of 1950 at the United Nations by – India and Yugoslavia, both of which refused to align themselves with either side in the Korean War.