US blocks Viet project meant to step up food

November 6, 1981

The United States is now using food as an instrument of its foreign policy, Monitor special UN correspondent Louis Wiznitzer reports. It has succeeded in blocking a $5 million project (already reduced from the originally intended $25 million) by the World Food Program aimed at building dams in Vietnam that would improve the food situation there, which is reportedly dire.

According to diplomatic sources, the US, in using the food weapon, ''intends to punish Vietnam for its occupation of Cambodia.''