News Currents
MIDDLE EAST
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's five-month economic blockade has left thousands of Iraqi Kurds at the limits of their abilities to survive the winter and facing imminent starvation, Kurdish guerrilla leader Massoud Barazani said in Ankara. He plans to travel to London for talks about the plight of these Kurds with Prime Minister John Major.... Leaders of Iraqi opposition parties began a series of meetings in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, over the weekend to discuss a united strategy to topple Saddam.... Eg ypt is spending more than $100 million in concession agreements to develop oil wells and wants to step up exploration to boost its crude reserves.... The Israeli government is planning to airlift the remaining 1,500 Jews out of Yemen to Israel, the Sunday Times reported in London. UNITED STATES
Patrick Buchanan, whose strong showing in the New Hampshire primary shocked President Bush's reelection campaign, got the cold shoulder in Florida Saturday night when a group of Republicans, angered by his speech at a party fund-raiser, stalked out of the gathering.... President Bush's popularity has fallen to its lowest level and is well under 50 percent for the first time, polls released Saturday by CNN/Time and Newsweek showed.... US Rep. Nicholas Mavroules (D) of Massachusetts is the target of a fede ral investigation into whether he accepted bribes and used his influence to have federal prisoners transferred, the Boston Globe and Boston Herald reported. The Globe reported yesterday that Mavroules has accepted autos from a Massachusetts dealership but failed to report them.... Singer Paul Simon will perform at Farm Aid V at Texas Stadium March 14 to raise money for financially troubled family farms and to heighten awareness of their plight. ENVIRONMENT AND SCIENCE
A forum on the environment, meeting in Amsterdam, charged an alarming gap in standards exists between developed and developing countries, its members said. The International Water Tribunal said multinational companies often operated with double standards, and third-world countries frequently failed to protect their citizens. The US-owned Southern Peru Copper Corporation was criticized. LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN
The UN Conference on Trade and Development agreed Saturday in Cartagena, Colombia, to look at reforms aimed at adapting the organization to the post-cold-war world. Working groups will examine privatization and worldwide cuts in military spending. One document urges governments to continue easing the debt burden of third-world countries and to stem protectionism.... The Organization of American States Saturday presented the two conflicting sides in the Haitian crisis a three-point plan that urges the two
parties to agree on a timetable for the return of ousted leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
