On the sidelines, nuclear powers India and Pakistan held historic talks.
"Our countries have the right to use nuclear technology for peaceful
purposes," Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque told reporters at the
Non-Aligned Movement summit in which the ailing Fidel Castro, 80, did not play
a public role.
North Korea charged that the United States left it no option but to secure
deterrent nuclear weapons, and pledged that as long as it was hit by US
sanctions it would not be back in talks.
"Our country will never return to the talks under US sanctions," Kim Yong
Nam, president of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly, told NAM
leaders and delegates.
"The United States, far from complying with the six-party commission's
agreements, has continued to impose unilateral sanctions sending the talks to a
standstill and dragging the situation into an unpredictable point," he charged.
Complaining that Washington was "threatening Korea using all sorts of
maneuvers, accusing it of being part of an 'Axis of Evil,'" he said: "Korea has
nuclear arms as a deterrent to firmly guarantee the peace and security of the
Korean peninsula and the region."
NAM heads of state and government from 56 countries and delegates from 118
countries were due to adopt a voluminous final declaration backing Iran's right
to nuclear energy; urging UN reform to give greater weight to poor countries;
opposing terrorism and what they see as US interventionism.
A draft NAM document also condemns what it terms Israel's "unlawful"
policies in the Palestinian territories and its recent military intervention in
Lebanon.
There was widespread speculation about the health of Fidel Castro, whose
convalescence kept him out of the spotlight he has enjoyed for five decades.
"Doctors insisted that he continues his rest," Perez Roque said at the opening of the summit, adding that Castro's brother Raul would represent Cuba
at the gathering.
Raul Castro, 75, long Cuba's defense chief, officially heads Cuba while his bearded sibling recovers from gastrointestinal surgery he underwent in July.
"Once he is fully capable of resuming his duties, Fidel will be the chairman of
the Non-Aligned Movement," Perez Roque said.
Among the prominent leaders speaking at the two-day summit was Iran's
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who insisted Tehran's controversial atomic
program had strictly peaceful objectives, and claimed the United States was the
real nuclear threat.
Raul Castro, and Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, also delivered harsh
condemnations of US policies, while Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called
for "moderation, harmony and reason."
Perez Roque slammed the United States for putting Cuba on its list of nations supporting terrorism "for defending itself," he said, while not including Israel which he said had killed many civilians.
"That is the hypocritical act of a superpower," the top Cuban diplomat
said.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf started bilateral talks in Havana Saturday, a Pakistani official said.
The hour-long breakthrough talks, largely on the Kashmir dispute, were the
first high-level meeting between the nuclear-armed neighbors since deadly
bombings in Mumbai on July 11. India accused its neighbor of not reining in
"terrorists."
The ailing Fidel Castro on Friday greeted Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in a hospital-like room at an undisclosed location as well as Argentine lawmaker Miguel Bonasso, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, state media say.
The next NAM summit will be held in 2009 in Egypt, Raul Castro announced.