United Nations, October 8 (RHC)-- The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) has used the United Nations General Assembly Sixth Committee to voice its unequivocal condemnation of terrorism. As the movement's current chair, Iran, represented the body at the session, which kicked off its annual meeting with a focus on international terrorism in New York on Tuesday.

Gholam-Hossein Dehqani, Iran's deputy ambassador to the UN, said: "The Non-Aligned Movement unequivocally condemns as criminal and rejects terrorism in all its forms and manifestations. Terrorism should not be equated with the legitimate struggle of peoples under colonial or alien domination and foreign occupation for self-determination and national liberation," he noted.

"The brutalization of peoples remaining under foreign occupation should continue to be denounced as the gravest form of terrorism."

NAM was founded in the former Yugoslavia in 1961. The countries of the Non-Aligned Movement represent nearly two-thirds of the United Nations members and contain 55 percent of the world population. NAM's purpose as stated in the Havana Declaration of 1979 is to ensure "the national independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of non-aligned countries."

In August 2012, Iran assumed the rotating presidency of NAM for a three-year term during the movement's summit in the Iranian capital Tehran.