INTERNATIONAL
University Daily Kansan / Friday, April 3, 1992
7
INTERNATIONAL BRIEFS
Windhoek, Namibia
Drought-plagued Namibia will start killing wildlife to feed hungry people, President Sam Nujoma said yesterday.
Wildlife will be killed for food
The president did not say which animals would be slaughtered, but the most likely targets are antelope, such as springbok and gemsbok, neither of which is an endangered species.
"I have no option but to declare that an emergency situation has arisen," Nujoma said. "All natural resources must be utilized to provide food for the needy."
Namibia, a vast desert nation, is one of several southern African countries suffering from the region's worst drought in a century. The South Africa, South Asia, South France and Zimbabwe, also are affected.
Islamabab, Pakistan
Rebels, president endorse plan
Afghan President Najibullah and the Moslem rebels fighting to overthrow his Communist-style government endorsed a plan yesterday to end their country's 13-year-old civil war.
The peace plan would transfer power from Najibullah to a transitional government selected late this month by some 500 Afghanis representing every faction — from the Kabul government through the range of exile and rebel grouns.
The major backers of the guerrillas — the United States, Pakistan and Iran—have made it clear they want Najibullah to leave only as part of an orderly transition. They fear an abrupt departure could trigger widespread fighting.
From The Associated Press
Rioters smite embassy Libvans protest U.N. air and arms embargo
TRIPOLI, Libya—Young Libyans with firebombs sacked the Venezuelan Embassy and tried to storm the Russian mission yesterday during a day of protests against countries that supported a U.N. air and arms embargo on Libya.
The Associated Press
The U.N. Security Council, meeting in emergency session, demanded that Libya pay for damage to the embassies and laid blame for the attacks on Col. Mohammar Gahafi.
"This is so transparently and obviously directed to bring pressure on members of the Security Council," said U.S. Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering.
Hundreds of students smashed furniture and ripped up the garden at the Venezuelan mission. Others tried to break into the Russian Embassy and destroyed four cars, then burned a Russian flag on the ambassador's limousine when they were turned back.
Rocks were thrown at the Austrian mission, and boisterous protests were held outside the Belgian, French and Italian embassies.
About 200 teen-agers tried and failed to break through the main door at the Russian Embassy, diplomats said. The rock-throwing demonstrators smashed four ears beyond repair, many windows and the entrance door to the embassy.
Hundreds of riot police with shields and batons kept chanting protesters away from the Belgian and Italian missions, which also represent the United States and Britain in diplomatic dealings with Libya.
Religious sects clash in Mexico
The Associated Press
MEXICO CITY — Scores of people were injured in a clash between Indian converts to evangelical Protestant religions and believers in a traditional Indian form of Roman Catholicism, authorities said yesterday.
The clash at La Hormiga involved Chamula Indian squatters who have been expelled from their villages for abandoning their centuries-old religion, a blend of Roman Catholicism and pre-Hispanic Indian beliefs.
The fighting occurred Wednesday at a squatter settlement on the outskirts of San Cristobal de las Vizcainas.
Religious differences have split Indian communities throughout southern Mexico in recent years as evangelical Protestantism has attracted converts. The sectarian differences have been sharpest among the Chamula, who are among Mexico's least assimilated Indians.
News reports said between 50 and 100 people were injured in the clash, which was among the worst sectarian violence in the region in recent years. The Red Cross evacuated 22 injured people, most suffering from gunshot wounds, according to Genoveva Mijanos Diaz, a doctor for the Red Cross.
Wednesday's violence broke out when several hundred Indians from the Chamula religious and political capital, San Juan Chamula, attacked La Hormiga with guns and clubs, news reports said.
U.N. report warns of threats to food supply
The Associated Press
That is an area the size of China and India combined.
UNITED NATIONS — The future of the world's food supply is threatened by damage people have done to more livestock and crops. (The soil loss since 1984, A.U.N., reportage.)
and pollution are other factors.
The report, called an "early warning" for a world whose population is expected to double in about 50 years, is based on data from the state of the Earth's arable land.
Overgrazing by livestock, inefficient farming practices and deforestation are to blame for the loss of fertile land, the U.N. Environment Program study found. Urbanization
Scientists fear that as the Earth's population grows from some 5.5 billion now to 10 billion by the year 2050, the loss of fertile land will lead to a permanent global food shortage.
"As land becomes scarce, how are we going to make sure that the common man in a developing country is able to get the food that he needs?" asked Visanathan Rajagopalan, a World Bank vice president who heads its group on agricultural research.
The U.N. Environmental Program study is titled the Global Assessment of Soil Degradation and intends to establish benchmarks so the rate of soil deterioration can be measured
more precisely.
"We are going to have to feed an increasingly large population on a finite base of arable land," soil researcher Dirk Brkvant said.
About 3 billion acres of land have suffered moderate to extreme degradation since 1945, accounting for 10.5 percent of the planet's fertile land, the study found. Of that land, 740 million acres are severely degraded and will be useless unless a "major international financial and technical" campaign is launched to reclaim them, Bryant said.
The report land the vast majority of the damaged land was in Asia, with 1.1 billion acres, and in Africa, with 792
Only 4.4 percent of North America's soil has been damaged or lost, the report said.
Although the use of fertilizers and high-yield crops has helped offset the loss of agricultural land and prevented food shortages so far, ecologists say the dual trends of declining farmland and increasing world population will eventually lead to a supply crisis.
In addition, those so-called "green revolution" techniques may be losing their effectiveness.
About one-fourth of the United States' cropland is eroding at an unsustainable rate, according to the U.S. Soil Conservation Service.
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