The event was also marked by North Korea's defense of its nuclear weapons program, historic talks between India and Pakistan, and the absence of convalescing Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Leaders of the developing world agreed on the need to counter overwhelming US influence, and several launched blistering attacks on the United States.

Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi however insisted the NAM was not "anti-any country."

"I do not see this summit as anti-US," he said, stressing there were differences of opinion within the 118-state movement.

The two-day summit highlighted the rows between the United States and two countries that US President George W. Bush has accused of being part of an "axis of evil," Iran and North Korea.

Bush first used the phrase in the January 2002 state of the union speech in reference to Iran, North Korea, and Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

North Korea charged that Washington 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 return to six-party talks.

"Korea has nuclear arms as a deterrent to firmly guarantee the peace and security of the Korean peninsula and the region," said Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly, on Saturday.

The summit's 100-page final declaration backed Iran's right to nuclear energy. Washington and European powers fear that Tehran wants to use its nuclear program to build an atomic bomb.

Cuban Interim President Raul Castro, who chaired the summit, met Saturday with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to express "Cuba's support for the right of Iran -- or any other country -- for peaceful use of nuclear energy."

Ahmadinejad, who insisted Tehran's atomic program is strictly peaceful, claimed the United States was the real nuclear threat, traveled to Venezuela Sunday.

In the declaration, heads of state and government from 56 countries and delegates from the other NAM member states urged UN reform to give greater weight to poor countries, and expressed their opposition to terrorism and what they see as US interventionism.

The document condemned what it terms Israel's "unlawful" policies in the Palestinian territories and its recent military intervention in Lebanon.

It also "roundly rejected" the "axis of evil" terminology, stating that it "stigmatizes other nations using the pretext of the war on terror."

Before leaving Havana, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a harsh Washington critic, said that the United States was the "epicenter of evil" and an empire in decline.

The text also rejects drawing up "a unilateral list that accuses states of alleged support to terrorism, which is incompatible with international laws and constitute a form of psychological and political terrorism."

On the sidelines of the summit, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf agreed at their breakthrough talks Saturday to resume negotiations on the disputed Kashmir region and to jointly battle terrorism.

The summit's big absentee, Fidel Castro, 80, still met with foreign dignitaries in a hospital-like room, clad in pajamas and looking gaunt.

Castro met with Iran's Ahmadinejad, India's Singh and Ecuadoran President Alfredo Palacio on Sunday. He earlier met with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan; presidents Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela; Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, and Argentine legislator Miguel Bonasso.

Many of the summit participants headed from here to New York, where they will take part this week in the UN General Assembly.

The next NAM summit will be held in 2009 in Egypt.

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