Word: cairo
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...United Nations could hardly have picked a more appropriate place for next week's International Conference on Population and Development than crowded, chaotic Cairo. Home to 14 million people, the Egyptian capital shows all too clearly the consequences of the inexorable human drive to have children. Cairo's open space per capita must be measured in square inches, and the poorest citizens build shelters on rooftops, in cemeteries and in the city dump. Cramped conditions are nothing new, of course, but even old-timers lament that population pressures are making Egyptians "bestial" to one another...
...Cairo is also buffeted by all the political, cultural and religious forces that tend to interfere with effective birth-control programs. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has worked hard, with some success, to curb the country's growth rate, and the government is proud to be hosting a conference expected to attract up to 20,000 participants, including several heads of $ state. Egypt's fundamentalist Muslim sheiks take a different view, however, drawing cheers from their followers when they denounce the meeting as a "Zionist and imperialist assault against Islam...
Timothy Wirth, a U.S. Under Secretary of State and a leader of the American delegation going to Cairo, denies that the U.N. plan would impose Western values on other cultures. Argues Wirth: "Everything in the document is done within the framework of national laws, cultures and religions. The U.N. is not going to dictate what a culture...
...delegates to Cairo appear to have two main options: approve the essence of the draft proposal, allowing the Vatican and its supporters to file dissents, or try to find some consensus language that papers over the conflicts, which usually happens with U.N. documents. The need for consensus reduces action plans to pallid, inoffensive wish lists that quickly disappear into bureaucratic oblivion after the signing ceremonies. Such was the outcome of the Earth Summit that convened in Rio de Janeiro two years ago. But continued indecisiveness on the population issue may be a formula for disaster. Speaking in Washington recently, Nobel...
...nuclear weapons. In spite of its severe problems of debt and unemployment, the Iranian government has not reduced its spending on arms programs. "Iran wants to be the most powerful military presence in the gulf," says Mourad El-Desouky, a military expert at Al Ahram Strategic Studies Center in Cairo. "It wants nuclear weapons for deterrence and to intimidate its neighbors." He believes that the Iranians have the money to go shopping for plutonium and weapons-grade uranium from Russia's black market in Western Europe, and "it is realistic to think they are doing that...