NAM, block politics outdated and irrelevant: US

"These sorts of blocs and divisions are outdated. They often don't serve the national interest of the countries that participate in these blocs," Susan Rice told a press conference here.

"Part of what we are beginning to see and certainly what we think is essential, to tackle the challenges that I described at the outset, is for countries to move beyond those traditional reflexive bloc affiliations and look at ways to step up individually and collectively to meeting 21st-century security threats," she argued.

In response to a question, Rice said NAM is part of a phenomenon where activity in the UN General Assembly has in the past often broken down in the form of bloc politics: Non-Aligned; sometimes Western and developed countries on the other hand.

Rice's comment on NAM came while she was responding to a question on China's role in the UN. A permanent member of the Security Council, China has a big stake and is playing large already at the UN, she said. "It acts in that role very much in an active way. China is one of the countries with which we work quite closely on the Security Council," she said.

China, she said, is also a major player in the General Assembly, where it has traditionally come to work with and sometimes on behalf of the NAM.