But for anyone who is anyone in the developing world, the city was the place to be that September weekend. 56 heads of state and government attended. The NH Parque Central Hotel can now boast that 19 Prime Ministers and Presidents stayed there at the same time.

The NAM cast list includes some of the least popular men in Washington. As Presidents Ahmadinejad of Iran, Chávez of Venezuela, Lukashenko of Belarus and Mugabe of Zimbabwe gathered for the final group photo, plenty of US commentators were already dismissing the meeting as nothing more than a gallery of rogues.

But the reality was more complicated. Alongside the veteran America-bashers were plenty of close US allies, including representatives from Colombia, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, India and Pakistan.

The name "non-aligned" is perhaps unfortunate. It begs so many questions. The first, obvious one, is who, or what is this group of 118 nations not aligned with?

The answer used to be a little simpler. When the term was first coined by India's Prime Minister, Nehru, in 1954, the cold war was in full swing, and the developing world was feeling squeezed out. Leaders, including Nehru, alongside Tito of Yugoslavia, Nasser of Egypt and Nkrumah of Ghana, pledged that it was time to carve their own path. They wanted to found an organisation which was not ideologically tied to either the United States, or the Soviet Union. The first non-aligned summit was held in Belgrade in 1961. Twenty-five countries attended.

The following years proved that being non-aligned is not easy. As the movement grew, and the cold war strengthened, there were plenty who questioned whether members really were as ideologically independent as they claimed they were. Notoriously, in 1979, the last time the summit was held in Havana, Cuba declined to condemn the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, another non-aligned member.

By the time the Soviet Union broke up in the early 90s, more questions were being asked. This time, whether the NAM was a cold war irrelevance which should be quietly disbanded. If, the critics suggested, the world only has one superpower, what does being non-aligned mean? Being anti-American?

For some, the NAM is certainly an opportunity to resist a world they see dominated by the US. Cuba, which holds the Presidency for the next three years, hopes the organisation can be a balance to what it views as US double standards and the inequities of neo-liberal globalization. It would like to expand the role of NAM into a South-South trade and co-operation block along the lines of the model it is already creating for trade with Venezuela and Bolivia.
"A new, bi-polar world is emerging," declared Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chávez at the summit. North Korea also joined the call for a revitalized NAM to raise a united voice against what it characterised as American bullying. South African President Thabo Mbeki pointed to neo-liberalism as the cause of the marginalization of the underdeveloped nations. Other countries, including Pakistan and India, took a more cautious line, and ensured that the final summit declaration was only implicit in its criticism of US foreign policy. The document also condemned what members saw as Israel's disproportionate military response in Lebanon, and called for the United Nations to be more representative of all of its members.

The vast majority of NAM members are from the smaller nations of the world. For them, the three-yearly meetings are a real opportunity. A chance, in terms of votes and podium time, to be on an equal footing with major players in the developing world. They can make their voices heard, and press the flesh with usually inaccessible leaders.

In almost all world summits, the real deals are often struck on the sidelines. In Havana, the most significant of these was between nuclear-armed neighbors India and Pakistan. In a Cuban government protocol house, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf agreed to resume formal peace negotiations, which were frozen after the July train bombings in Mumbai.

And what did Havana's residents and tourists get out of it? In the weeks before the NAM meeting, the capital, to quote one habanera, "put its makeup on" with roads being re-laid, buildings being painted and pot plants out in force. The Cuban government has said that the thousands of computers imported for the event will be donated to Cuban schools.

And the benefits for other visitors? Well, you might notice that your hotel has been a little spruced up. And if you are lucky enough to hire one of the fleet of BMWs which was specially imported for the event, you can wonder which President last sat in that passenger seat.