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World

By TOM MORRIS

The final agreement reached at the 149-
nation Paris meeting on chemical weapons
pledged participants not to use them,
although there appears to be little if any
provision for enforcement. The meeting
was organized to seek ways to enforce and
extend the 1925 :
Geneva protocol
banning such wea-
pons.

The five-day
conference, called

- by the French gov-

ernment, was pre-
ceded by the dram-
atic shooting down
of two Libyan Air
Force jets by the ;
U.S. Navy in a SHEVARDNADZE
bizarre series of events whose details are
still unfolding, in which Washington
accuses Libya of building a plant with the
potential of manufacturing chemical
arms.

Canadian External Affairs Minister Joe
Clark supported both the U.S. interpreta-
tion of the shooting incident and its ver-
sion of the Libyan plant’s capabilities.
Further, Canada has used its new UN
Security Council seat to join Washington
in opposing a resolution criticizing U.S.

military actions off the Libyan coast. The
majority of states, including the “Soviet
Union, were unconvinced by the US.
argument about the Libyan plant, and
strongly condemned its military action.

Despite the U.S. action, which threa-
tened to sidetrack the meeting, the high-
light of the Paris conference was the
surprise announcement on the first day by
Soviet Foreign Minister Shevardnadze
that the USSR would not wait for an
international treaty, but would begin
immediately to destroy its stocks of chem-
ical weapons — and would permit for-
eign observers to verify the destruction
process.

This, the Soviet spokesman announced,
will begin as soon as the new plant being
built for their destruction is complete.

Again, unfortunately, the contribution
by Canada, whose respresentative took
the rostrum the day following Soviet
Union’s announcement, was completely
inappropriate and disappointing.

Rather than seizing the opportunity to
press other nations, especially the United
States, which possesses huge stockpiles of
chemical weapons, to follow the Soviet
example and begin their destruction,
Clark confined himself to pious general
comments about “limiting our capabili-
ties” to inflict horrible chemical genocide.

Clark rapped for chemical arms stand

Even when pressed later by the media
on the subject, Clark refused to speak up,
saying he regarded as “unhelpful” any
Canadian action to urge the U.S. to take
actions similar to those of the USSR con-
cerning chemical weapons’ stockpiles.

His comments drew a sharp response in
a letter sent by the Toronto Disarmament
Network (TDN) Jan. 10, The letter
expressed “surprise and disappointment”
in Clark’s statement in Paris, which it
called “incredible.

“The least we expect from our represen-
tative to the Paris conference is a pledge to
halt all Canadian production, testing and
research into chemical weapons, and a
commitment to urge other friends and
allies to do the same,” the letter said.

“The minister should know that the
elimination of the horror of chemical
weapons is not going to be an easy thing to
do,” the letter continued, “but (Canada)
can playa role in building a dialogue if it is
willing to adopt a more independent for-
eign policy.”

The TDN meeting was attended by
NDP MP Dan Heap, Toronto city coun-
cillor Jack Layton and Toronto school
board member John Doherty.

The USS. role in the chemical weapons’
race was also the centre of attention for a

25-country coalition of activists which
argued that the United States has undercut
its credibility in urging other states to
refrain from chemical weapons’ manufac-
ture by its own stepped-up program.

The U.S.-based Foundation on Eco-
nomic Trends noted that Washington has
boosted its chemical weapons spending
seven-fold since 1981, has huge stockpiles
of the weapons and is engaged in sophisti-
cated binary weapons research and manu-
facture.

It is precisely against this dangerous
trend that Clark should have spoken
against at the Paris meeting, say critics,
rather than the combination of direct and
indirect backing he gave Washington.

Last week, in a telegram, Communist
Party leader George Hewison slammed
Ottawa’s support of the U.S. shooting
down of Libyan aircraft, urging a reversal
of this position. “As a new member of the
UN Security Council,” Hewison wrote,
“Canada has a special responsibility to
promote peace and understanding in
international relations ... and should call
for the withdrawal of all foreign military
forces from the Mediterranean and the
Middle East as a basis for stability and
security.”

Lake Baikal: symbol of Soviet environment

LISTVYANKA, Lake Baikal — Setina
valley at the very heart of Asia, surrounded
by snow-capped mountains and forests of
evergreen, lies a lake whose rugged, prime-
val beauty and ice-cold, crystalline waters
make it one of our earth’s most extraordi-
nary and precious natural treasures.

Lake Baikal, which a famous and popu-
lar song calls “‘sviachennoe morye” — the
“sacred sea” — is a place that has always

-€voked powerful and intense emotions. The

Inspiration of artists, the fascination of

Scientists, Lake Baikal is today also the

most piercing battle-cry of Soviet environ-
mentalists.

Roughly the same size as Lake Erie, but
seven times as deep — 1.7 km deep, in
fact — Baikal contains a stunning 22 per

cent of the world’s entire fresh water supply.

It would take all of the rivers on earth put
together — the St. Lawrence, Rhine, Volga,
Amazon, Mississippi, Congo, every one of
them — a whole year to fill Baikal’s basin.
The lake is home to 2,637 species of life,
84 per cent of them unique and specific to
this area, These include a large population
of rare inland, fresh-water seals, which
frolic, dive and bask around the shore, as
Well as the unique Baikal sponge, plankton,
Sturgeon and crab. Together they make up
what is perhaps the most intricate, delicate
and unusual ecosystem on earth.
And that is why, for the past 25 years,
Oviet environmentalists, writers, artists
and scientists have been sounding the
alarm, pointing to the gradual but inexora-
ble build-up of settlement and economic

activity around the lake.

“We began to fight for Lake Baikal back
in the 1960s, even though it was — and
temains — the cleanest lake in the world,”
Says Valentina Galkina, a geo-biologist
based at the Limnological Institute in the
Village of Listvyanka, on Lake Baikal’s
Southwestern shore. “We understand that if
We fail now to prevent the lake’s deteriora-
tion, we will never be able to restore it, no
matter how great the committment. It is just
too complex, too fragile.”

The threat has come from many direc-
tions. A modern pulp mill built at Baikalsk,
on the south shore, in the late 1960s, has
been the object of furious controversy. Log-
ging and industry along many of the 336
rivers and streams that feed Baikal cause
much concern, as does herbicide and pesti-
cide use on nearby collective farms. Air
pollution from large cities within 100 km of
the lake, primarily Irkutsk and Ulan Ude, is
another problem. Yet another is camping,
tree-felling and littering by increasing
numbers of tourists attracted, paradoxi-
cally, by the wild and untouched beauty of
the lake.

Nevertheless, fewer than 40,000 people
live permanently within a 45-km radius of
the lake. After decades of campaigning by
virtually the entire intelligentsia of Siberia,
and public explosions that saw thousands of
people take to the streets of Irkutsk on at
least two occasions in 1987, the prospects
for preserving Lake Baikal in something
like its pristine state actually look good.

“We went through some long, hard
years,” says Galkina, “when the press never
wrote a word about Baikal, except to say
that everything’s fine, there’s no danger. But
over the past couple of years the press has
really brought our cause alive, turned it into
a national issue, and brought about real
action. Our local and regional party organi-
zations have also become activists for sav-
ing the lake, and that has also made a big
difference.”

Late last year, in what may.well become a
model for dealing with sensitive environ-
mental situations around the country, the
Central Committee of the CPSU and the
USSR Council of Ministers passed a tough,
comprehensive program for preserving and
protecting Lake Baikal. The main points:

® The pulp mill at Baikalsk, the largest
single menace to the lake, will be closed by
1993 and converted to a non-polluting fur-
niture assembly plant;

@ A 45-km zone around Lake Baikal is
designated a national park and has already
been placed under control of a special man-

agement board. The whole area may further _

be declared a “‘world heritage zone,”” and
UNICEF invited in to supervise it;

@ All timber-felling within the zone has

been prohibited;

® No new industry may be constructed
around the lake. Farms and factories that
already exist are to be converted to all-
electric power uses, and subject to extraor-
dinary environmental standards;

® Logging operations on any river flow-
ing into Baikal are banned;

®@ Many industries in Irkutsk and Ulan
Ude are to be converted from coal- and
oil-burning to natural gas.

Environmentalists and others who have
struggled long and hard express considera-
ble satisfaction with this program. But,
notes Galkina, there are problems.

“The decisions are good,” she says, “but
the implementation period is long. Also,
most measures concern the 45-km zone

around the lake, whereas we know the prob-
lem of pollution is growing and widespread.
and Baikal cannot, ultimately, remain
immune from these trends. For instance, we
have begun to see acid rain and acid snow in
Siberia for the first time lately. This is still
very rare, but the experience of the western
part of the country gives us reason to feel
alarm.

“Given all the threats and complexities.
we are not going to relax, we are not going
to become trusting,” she says.

At the Regional Executive Committee
(Ispolkom) in Irkutsk, the perspective is
slightly different. “To some extent, solving
Baikal’s problems means transferring them
somewhere else,” notes Valery Ignatev, the
region’s deputy chairman. “Our country
has a severe shortage of pulp and paper, and
we are building a new pulp mill at Ust-
Ilimsk, on the Angara River, to replace the
one that is to be shut down on Lake Baikal.

“Of course, we have learned many les-
sons. The Baikal plant has 96 per cent effec-
tiveness in waste treatment and the new one
will work to even more rigorous standards.
But we have also learned a lot about the
sensitivity of the environment through all of
this. We are still searching for the right
balance,” he says.

In fact, the movement of environmental
consciousness which began around the
intensely emotional issue of Lake Baikal has
been spreading throughout Siberia and the
country as a whole. The media these days is
energetically identifying and describing out-
standing problems in virtually every city
and region. Increasingly, the public is find-
ing new ways to have its own say and even
the last word in many cases: there are grow-
ing reports of offending factories being shut
down and their managements prosecuted.

Meanwhile, on the shores of dazzling
Lake Baikal, where a scientist will gladly
scoop up a cupful of lake water and drink it
down to prove the point — that it is the
cleanest water in the world — there is vic-
tory, at least for now, and a symbol of hope
for the world.

Pacific Tribune, January 23, 1989 + 9