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The Prince George Citizen - Tuesday, December 14,1993 - 7
World
U.S., EUROPEAN COMMUNITY REACH AGREEMENT
Path cleared for global trade accord
GENEVA (AP-CP) — The world’s two biggest traders, the United States and European Community, reached an agreement today paving the way for the big-gest-ever package for lowering trade barriers around the world.
Meanwhile, Canada abandoned its struggle to preserve agricultural import quotas in the new trade deal, and now is trying to get the best deal possible on tariffs.
The U.S. side scored a victory in its dispute with the EC over government subsidies to the aircraft manufacturer Airbus Industrie. But it came away empty-handed in its effort to gain greater access for Hollywood to European markets.
U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor said he and the EC’s trade chief,
Sir Leon Brittan, “agreed to disagree.” on the contentious issue of subsidies to European film-makers and barriers to U.S. movies and television shows.
But they said at a joint news conference that the movie dispute should not prevent a new General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade from being reached with more than 100 other countries.
“I believe that today has been a milestone in the history of world trade,” said Brittan.
Canadian Agriculture Minister Ralph Goodale said today Canada faced a solid wall of opposition to keeping the old system of protecting its dairy products, poultry and eggs from foreign competition.
“It has become very clear in the negotiating process here . . . that we have
been standing alone in favor of Article 11, while the rest of the world has been moving in a different direction,” he said in a telephone interview.
Article 11 of the GATT provided for the quota system. If a new GATT is implemented — in a year to a year and a half — foreign imports of supply managed products may be controlled only through tariffs.
“The system will obviously be somewhat different from the system we’ve been used to over the course of the last number of years,” said Goodale.
“But, I think if we look at it and think about it in a constructive and creative way, I think Canadians can do very well under this new system.”
Goodale wouldn’t comment on the
level of tariffs Canada has been negotiating. But he said he has been trying to get the best deal possible.
The change is not expected to result in significant price changes for consumers, Goodale said. But he acknowledged producers who have enjoyed the ironclad protection of import quotas would have to change the way they do business.
“It will be very important to make what adjustments may be necessary within our own system to ensure that our marketing systems can survive into the future,” he said.
Goodale said he plans to meet with his provincial counterparts Thursday to brief them on the talks and to lay plans for dealing with the expected changes.
Negotiators face a deadline of midnight
Wednesday night for a sweeping accord on lowering customs duties, opening markets and revamping outdated global trade rules. Economists predict the accord, which has been seven years in the making, eventually will expand the world economy by more than $200 billion US a year.
The Wednesday deadline was set in U.S. legislation that grants President Bill Clinton the power to send Congress a trade package that can only be approved on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. Otherwise, amendments and revisions by legislators could delay ot even block passage.
Earlier in the day, Japan opened open- • ing its market to imported rice.
NINE HOUSES CRUSHED
25 killed in Cairo rockfall
CAIRO (Reuter) — A huge chunk of rock weighing about 3,000 tonnes broke off an escarpment on the edge of Cairo today and crushed nine houses, killing at least 25 people and leaving about 50 others buried alive, authorities said.
Rescue teams removed the bodies of 25 people and worked to pull others out from under the fallen rock.
“It is a national disaster,” said the governor of Cairo, Omar Abdel-Akher.
The huge piece of rock broke off the Moqattam Hills, an escarpment on the eastern edge of the Nile valley, at dawn and landed on
the houses in the slum area of Manshiyet Naser. It broke into smaller rocks on impact.
Egyptian television quoted officials as saying the rock broke loose because heat from burning garbage at a nearby dump, coupled with damage from an earthquake that hit Egypt last year, cracked the cliff face. Garbage collectors bum much of Cairo’s household rubbish in the area.
Abdel-Akher said nine houses were destroyed and five damaged in the rockfall. Three cranes were brought in to lift rocks from off the houses, he said.
Many people rushed to the site to look for missing relatives and
women wept as bodies were pulled ouL Hundreds of residents gathered to watch the rescue teams.
District chairman Ibrahim Omar said at least 72 people lived in the nine collapsed houses.
“We expect that some of the residents were outside when the accident happened and we think at least 50 people are trapped under the rubble,” Omar said.
He said three survivors were found and were taken to hospital.
The Moqattam hills above were declared safe for housing in the 1960s and now have a population of at least 250,000.
Al Gore named top celebrity bore
MAPLEWOOD, NJ. (CP) — Vice-President Al Gore has been named America’s top celebrity bore by Alan Caruba, self-pro-claimed arbiter of cultural tedium.
“We’re beginning to miss the good old days when George Bush spent his vice-presidency attending funerals,” Caruba said in releasing his 10th annual list of overexposed
people.
Caruba is the founder of the Boring Institute, a one-man operation run out of his suburban New Jersey home where he has a public relations business.
Talk-show host David Letterman was No. 2, followed by one of his favorite targets for jokes, Joey Buttafuoco, the Long Island me-
chanic whose wife was shot and wounded by his teenage lover.
No. 4 was actress Shannon Doherty; No. 5, billionaire Ross Perot; No. 6, Roseanne and Tom Arnold; No. 7, Woody Allen and Mia Farrow; No. 8, actress Sharon Stone; No. 9, Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss; No. 10, Barney the Dinosaur.
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Court ruling orders release of Argentine cult members
BUENOS AIRES (AP-CP) — Twenty-one members of a religious cult, including two Canadians, were freed three months after a court ordered them held on kidnapping and other charges.
Sixteen men and five women belonging to The Family were released late Monday after the Chamber of Appeals in San Martin, just north of the capital, ruled a federal court doesn’t have jurisdiction in the matter, said cult spokesman Alberto Jurin.
A spokesman for the appeals court said the ruling revoked the federal court decision ordering the cult members held.
The appeals court said Buenos Aires province has jurisdiction over the case, but it was not immediately known if provincial authorities would prosecute cult members.
The cultists, including seven Americans and two Canadians, were arrested in police raids Sept. 1 on Buenos Aires-area homes belonging to the Argentina-based
group, an offshoot of the Children of God cult founded in California in 1969.
Jurin said Susana Borowick, 33, of Burlington, Ont., and Jesse Jude Mara, 21, of British Columbia, were among those released.
Also taken into custody were 138 children of group members, most of whom remained in government institutions late Monday. Jurin said the children were to be released to the religious community by today.
Members of the cult will likely leave Argentina as soon as possible, Steve Borowick, Susana’s brother, said today.
“You don’t stick around to find out if anything is pending,” he said from Burlington, Ont.
Borowick, 36, called the charges levelled against his sister “ridiculous.”
“They are fabricated . .'. this is persecution of a religious group.”
He added that charges have been dropped and all seized property returned to the sect.
‘At no point did anyone ever point a finger at my sister and ac*" cuse her of anything. She was part of a blanket charge.”
Susana Borowick’s 12-year-old son was detained in a government institution.
“He wasn’t abused by authorities, but his head was covered in lice and he was extremely depressed,” said Steve Borowick.
The 21 adults also had been held on charges of corruption of minors and religious and racial discrimination.
The Family appealed the charges, arguing that Federal Judge Roberto Marquevich did not have jurisdiction in the case.
Marquevich also has requested the detention of David Berg, 73, an American believed to be in hiding. A onetime evangelical minister, Berg founded the Children of God in California in 1969.
Branches of the cult have appeared in England, France, Australia and other countries.
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Machinery Is used to clear the area where houses were flattened by boulders which fell off a mountainside in Cairo today. Twenty*five are known dead and the toll could rise as high as 50.