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Dakar (ANTARA News) - Members of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) agreed to adopt a new charter during their 11th summit here on Friday evening, or Saturday morning in Indonesia.

"In adopting new programs members raised several topics among other things on democracy, good governance and elimination of Islamophobia," Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said after the closing of the summit here on Friday evening.

The president said that OIC members already had the idea to change the charter since along time ago. Deliberations began in 1996 to include topics on good governance and democratization.

In the subsequent process, there were also issues which were previously thought to be sensitive came to the surface, the president said.

The charter also contained issues which suggested greater respect to human rights, as well as to women`s and children`s rights.

Apart from democratization and human right protection, the charter also stressed on efforts to increase economic cooperation among OIC members.

"The economic cooperation among OIC members is aimed at increasing welfare and at helping the needy ones" the president said.

There was also a proposal on the formation of a free market among OIC member nations. The free market did not need to cover all OIC members in the first stage.

Yudhoyono said that although 70 percent of energy supply came from OIC members, there were still many of them which were relatively still poor, creating a significantly wider gap among them.

It was the gap which the OIC wanted to narrow through the raising of an Islamic solidarity fund which was expected to reach US$10 billion.

No decision has been made on the mechanism of the fund raising, though there is a proposal that it is collected based on the gross domestic product of a country. According to Yudhoyono, the fund raising would be more effective if it was based on the per capita income.

He said that the Indonesian government had expressed its commitment and was ready to contribute to the fund raising. "Indonesian economic ministers are discussing it," the head of state said.

He said amount Indonesia would contribute would not differ too much from the one contributed by Malaysia.(*)

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