News Digest Edited by Diana Johnson
Gorbachev: Food shortage not nearly met
MOSCOW - President Mikhail S.
Gorbachev called on the Communist
Party Wednesday to take urgent steps
to case chronic food shortages - the
Soviet Union’s “biggest wound’’ -
but he indicated the problem would
exist for years.
The party’s policy-making Cen
tral Committee began a two-day
meeting largely devoted to agricul
tural reform, including a search for
ways to increase the food supply and
improve traditionally dreary rural
life.
The 58-year-old Kremlin leader,
himself the son of a southern Russian
peasant, said conditions in some re
gions of the countryside were at a
‘ ‘critical level,’ ’ with mass migration
of their population to cities.
Productivity on Soviet farms is so
low, he said, the Soviet Union still
must go abroad to buy “large quanti
ties of grain, meat, fruits, vegetables,
sugar, vegetable oil and some other
staples” to meet domestic demand.
Gorbachev, once the party’s over
seer for agriculture, called for “an
agrarian policy that will be able to
restore the peasant as the master on
the land, and dependably solve the
food problem.”
‘‘Further delay in this matter is
simply inadmissible,” he said.
Among the measures endorsed by
Gorbachev was an ‘‘extensive transi
tion to leasing,” or allowing work
collectives and individuals to work
state-owned farmland in exchange
for a fee. He also said “more flexible
prices” for crops purchased by the
stale would go into effect Jan. 1,
1990.
Before Gorbachev spoke on farm
policy, the 300-membcr Central
Committee moved to elect its top
leaders, including Gorbachev, to the
new parliament.
.. ■— ■■■ 111 "■ — ■■■ ■■■ —■ 1 ■■■ "’ ""n
The Communist Party is one of 30
organizations with the power to
choose one-third of the 2,250 repre
sentatives in the new Congress of
People’s Deputies.
Despite the publicity touting this
campaign as the Soviet Union’s first
multicandidatc election, the Com
munist Party chose to nominate just
100 people for its 100 scats. Party
members had suggested more than
31,000 names.
The deputies elected by the party
in a secret ballot include most mem
bers of the 12-man ruling Politburo,
26 workers and seven collective
farmers, the official Tass news
agency reported.
The food problem is likely to pro
duce far more discussion at the Cen
tral Committee plenum, since the
party’s conservative agriculture
chief, Yegor K. Ligachcv, apparently
disagrees with Gorbachev on a solu
tion.
In rcccnl appearances, uigacncv
has skipped lighlly pver Gorbachev’s
plan to lease state-owned fields to
farmers, making them “masters of
the land” and providing an incentive
to prixiucc more.
Instead, Ligachcv has emphasized
collective farming - the traditional
system that has left consumers stand
ing in line for meat and vegetables.
Tass, reporting on the first day of
the plenum, said Gorbachev called
the country’s continued food short
ages, which necessitate the rationing
of meal, sugar and other staples in
many regions, “our society’s biggest
wound.”
Tass did not immediately provide
a detailed account of Gorbachev’s
remarks on the new measures being
contemplated in agriculture, but its
initial report indicated the Kremlin
leader was resigned to ongoing food
shortages in the next several years.
v * m « a V
i>u une iiun proposed allowing
farmers to own outright the land they
till, or the breakup of the giant collec
tive and state farms that have been the
backbone of Soviet agriculture since
the days of Stalin,
Gorbachev told the Central Com
mittee collective and state farms have
“huge potentialities” that can be
exploited with the right management
techniques.
Whatever the decision on leasing,
the Central Committee is likely to
agree on the need to ease the poverty
and isolation of rural life. It is also
expected to order the dismantling, at
least partially, of an agricultural
superministry created in l‘)XS
The Central Committee has the
power to change the membership of
top party bodies like the Politburo
and Secretariat. Tass said it would
reconvene Thursday to discuss Gor
bachev’s farm report.
I
import ban unlikely to nave impact
on city streets, although Colt drops
model and refuses to tell numbers
WASHINGTON - Experts said
Wednesday the Bush administra
tion’s ban on imports of semiauto
matic rifles would have scant impact
on crime since so many of those
weapons already are in circulation
and more are being manufactured
domestically.
“The lifting of the import permits
... will reduce the supply of assault
weapons to gun dealers in the coun
try,” said Cheryl Epps, legislative
analyst for the International Associa
tion of Chiefs of Police, but “many
assault weapons are manufactured
domestically.”
The suspension won’t have any
effect on crime “because the flow of
weapons w:ll remain the same if
domestic manufacturers fill the
void,” she said.
However, the growth of the do
mestic arsenal promised to lake a
decline, too, with an announcement
by Colt Industries Inc. on Wednesday
that it was voluntarily suspending
sales of its domestically produced
AR15 semiautomatic assault-style
rifles.
Colt would not say how many of
the weapons it makes.
“If it is determined by the govern
ment review that semiautomatic
rifles are not appropriate for the
commercial market, we will not sell
the AR15 in that market,” said Coll
spokesman Mike Dunn.
Bush administration drug director
William J. Bennett welcomed Colt’s
decision as “an act of civil responsi
bility.”
On Tuesday, Bennett announced
the suspension of pending import
permits for more than 110,000 semi
automatic rifles, referred to as “as
sault-style” because they look like
machine guns.
The White House stressed
Wednesday that there were no plans
to curtail sales of similar rifles pro
duced domestically.
Gwynne Pcirson, retired professor
of criminology at Howard University
and a police officer for 23 years in
Oakland, Calif., said the ban on im
ports will have no immediate impact,
but ultimately could if it is made
permanent.
“I think the ban on imports will
have a definite positive effect, but it
will have to trickle down and we may
not even see the impact next year,”
he said.
“So many of them have been
brought in in the recent past, that they
will still be in the market,” he said.
4 ‘The only thing the ban will do in the
short run is to increase the price of the
available weapons.”
Gregg Risch of Handgun Control,
one of the country’s leading gun
control advocates, said the organiza
tion is “thrilled” by the administra
tion’s action, but was even harsher
than Peirson in his assessment of the
possible impact on crime, saying
simply: “Zero.”
“There arc a couple of million of
them already out on the streets, gun
stores already have large stocks of
ones already imported and domesti
cally made ones, and yesterday’s
action doesn’t do anything to stop
them from selling those,” Risch said.
“We’re not saying it will have a
tremendous effect on crime,” said
one Treasury Department official
who spoke on condition of anonym
ity. “But in three to four years, we
would have 1 million of those guns
here.”
The Colt AR15, the semiauto
matic version of the military’s M-16
rifle, is the most similar domestically
made weapon to those whose imports
have been suspended, such as semi
automatic versions of AK-47s and
Uzi carbines, according to Dick Ped
ersen of the Treasury Department’s
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms.
The suspension on imports docs
not affect thousands of other semi
automatic rifles awaiting import per
mits, Pedersen said.
Jeff Reiner/Deity Nebraskan
Central Americans agree
on U.N. peacekeeping plan
Chileans: Scare is Gringo lie
UNITED NATIONS - Central
American diplomats Wednesday
reached an agreement in principle
for U.N. peacekeepers to patrol
Central America to make sure
guerrillas do not launch cross-bor
der raids.
The U.N.’s working document
for the force called for up to 100
military observers to monitor Cen
tral American border areas in
speedboats, helicopters and all
‘errain vehicles.
Military' officers and foreign
ministry officials from Nicaragua,
El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica
and Guatemala reached agreement
in principle to recommend the plan
today, hours before their two days
of talks were scheduled to end.
“We approved the document in
the sense that we discussed the
document, and there are no dis
agreements," said Nicaragua’s
deputy foreign minister, Victor
Hugo Tinoco, as he left U.N.
Headquarters.
The foreign ministers of five
nations will now ask the United
Nations to begin setting up the
peacekeeping force, a step that
Tinoco called *‘a formality. ’
The head of the Honduran dele
gation, Ambassador Roberto
Flores Bermudez, confirmed that
agreement in principle had been
achieved.
Up to 11,000 Nicaraguan rebels
have bases in Honduras from
which they launch raids into Nica
ragua. They are the prime focus of
the U.N. peacekeeping plan.
SANTIAGO,Chile - “Buy! Buy!
Don’t believe the gringos’ lies!’’
chanted a street vendor of grapes,
summing up the anger Chileans felt
Wednesday over a U.S. sc°rc con
cerning fruit from the Sout Ameri
can nation.
Even though the action was taken
after cyanide was found in two grapes
exported by Chile to the United
States, the president of the Stale Bank
called the U.S. action “an aggres
sion, almost an act of war.”
The leader of the farm producers’
association said, “It paves the way to
terrorism against the world food trade
in the future.”
The nation’s booming fruit export
industry, meanwhile, remained para
lyzed as huge inventories of fruit
were being checked.
The National Exporters Associa
tion said “not a trace” of any alien
substance has been found in thou
sands of crates of fruit ready for ex
port that have been checked since the
inspection began two days ago.
Exporters, growers and packers
voluntarily suspended all their opera
tions Tuesday night for 72 hours to
allow the stored fruit to be checked.
Net?raskan
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Life expectancy gap persists
WASHINGTON - Life expec
tancy of while Americans continues
to increase while that of blacks de
clines, and other significant health
differences between Caucasians and
minorities remain, according to gov
ernment statistics released Wednes
day.
The figures, contained in an an
nual Public Health Service report,
dhow that blacks are dying younger
than whites, blacks are twice as likely
to die in infancy as whites and sub
stantially fewer black women who
are pregnant receive early prenatal
care.
“The report shows, as have others
for as long as they have been issued,
that there is a disparity between the
health of our white and black popula
tions,” said Health and Human Serv
ices Secretary Louis Sullivan.
The report is a compilation of sta
tistics previously released by the
National Center for Health Statistics,
which is part of the health service. It
is based on figures for the years 1970
through 1986, the latest year for
which comprehensive data is avail
able.
While life expectancy at birth for
whites increased from 75.3 years in
1985 to 75.4 in 1986, life expectancy
for blacks declined from 69.5 to 69.4
during the period, the report said. For
all Americans, life expectancy was
74.8 in 1986, up from 74.7 the year
before.
For whites and the overall popula
tion,' the figures were the same in
1984 as in 1985, but for blacks the
1986 decline in life expectancy fol
lowed a similar one in 1985, when it
was 69.7, which Sullivan called “a
disturbing trend.”
The report said the life-span de
clines among blacks were the result
of increases in deaths from AIDS,
homicides, influenza and pneumo
nia.