News In Brief

East-West parley agrees on joint clean-air fight

A major East-West environmental conference agreed Wednesday on a joint strategy to fight air pollution, but it did not commit participants to any specific targets on cutting industrial emissions.

Accord had been stalled by a last-minute dispute between the United States and the Soviet Union over whether the 31-nation conference's final document should carry a Soviet-supported reference to the superpower arms race.

The United States said an environmental conference was no place to discuss nuclear weapons.

A compromise, with which both sides said they were happy, linked environmental protection to peace and security without referring to the arms race.