AFRO-ASIA: Half of Humanity

While a herd of spotted mouse deer grazed under the banyan trees nearby, five men who speak for nearly a fourth of the people in the world gathered inside an old palace in the Indonesian resort town of Bogor last week. The Prime Ministers of India, Pakistan, Ceylon, Burma and Indonesia—the so-called Colombo Powers—came together to plan history's first political conference of the nations of Africa and Asia. Questions to be settled were: where, when, why and whom to invite.

With an odd mixture of pomp and impatience, the five Prime Ministers engaged themselves in housekeeping details that for the...