QUICKIES: World
Zapatistas to Start March on Capital
07 Sept 97- The Zapatista rebels and their supporters say they plan to emerge on Monday from their mountain hideouts and set off on a long march to Mexico city, the capital.
The 750-mile trek would be the boldest step by the group since its brief uprising in early 1995, and the rebels first foray outside their stronghold in the southern state of Chiapas.
The marchers say they will walk some part of the way every day, condemning the Mexican Army’s presence in the Indian communities here, denouncing what they consider to be the Government’s reneging on an Indian rights accord and to press for renewed peace talks which stalled a year ago.
The predominantly Mayan rebels began their uprising on 01 Jan. 94, occupying
several cities in Chiapas and capturing the imagination of many Mexicans
and leftists worldwide. The march is expected to measure how much of that
initial outpouring of support they have maintained.*
New York Times, Reuters
US Biological Weapons Investigated
Cuba is bringing its case against the use of biological warfare by the US government to international attention. On 25 Aug. 97, Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Maria de los Angeloes called on signatories of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention treaty to investigate charges that the United States infected part of the island with parasites.
The Cubans requested the meeting of treaty signatories in Geneva. It is the first time the treaty signatories have been convened to investigate charges of biological aggression.
The charges stem from sightings of “cloudy emissions” from a US State Department plane flying over Cuba in 1996. “There is a coincidence in time and space between the appearance of the Thrips Palmi [parasitic] pest and the sprinkling of unknown substances by US aircraft,” the Cuban official told delegates.
The United States is one of 138 countries which signed the treaty. Donald
Mahley, the U.S . representative, says the emissions were “puffs of smoke”
to warn another aircraft of its presence. The committee will decide whether
to investigate Cuba’s charges.*
Workers World
African Nations Call For End to Embargo
On 22 Aug. 97, leaders of 33 African nations issued an appeal to end the U.S.-backed economic embargo against Libya. Deputies to the Union of African Parliamentarians, meeting in Benin, expressed “concern at the continuation of the air embargo and other measures imposed on Libya, which have caused extreme human and material harm to the Libyan Arab people.”
The United Nations imposed an embargo against all air traffic to or from Libya in 1992 at the urging of the U.S . and Great Britain. The U.N. imposed harsher economic sanctions in 1993.
The punitive measures were ostensibly in retaliation for Libya’s alleged
role in the bombing of a Pan Am airplane over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988.
No evidence of Libyan involvement has ever been produced.*
Workers World
