Gandhi Calls for $18-Billion Fund to Fight Pollution of Atmosphere

Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi on Tuesday proposed creating an $18 billion-a-year international environment fund, highlighting growing concern at the nonaligned summit over the pollution of the atmosphere.

Speaking on the second day of the conference, Gandhi said the proposed Planet Protection Fund would come under U.N. auspices and develop environment-friendly technologies that would be given free to members.

He estimated that if members contributed one-thousandth of their gross domestic product, the fund would receive $18 billion a year.

“Such a fund would enable those with the awareness and determination to conserve the environment to actually succeed in doing so,” Gandhi told delegates from the 102 nations of the Nonaligned Movement meeting in Belgrade.

With the four-day summit focusing hard on economic themes, Nigeria proposed a three-pronged approach to lifting the Third World’s debt burden, estimated at $1.3 trillion.

Debtor Courage Seen

Nigerian President Ibrahim Babangida said debtor nations are showing courage in restructuring their economies but need understanding from their creditors.

He proposed that:

-- All official government-to-government debt be canceled.

-- Repayments to the International Monetary Fund and World Bank be eased by giving debtors new soft loans.

-- Debts to commercial banks be bought at discounts of up to 80% by a new agency set up under the IMF and World Bank.

In a further initiative, Peru announced that it and 10 other countries have set up an informal group to put across the Third World viewpoint on debt, trade, monetary stability and other economic problems.

Peruvian officials said the group was launched at a breakfast hosted by President Alan Garcia and would fulfill a role similar to that of the Group of Seven leading industrial non-communist countries.

Peru, Yugoslavia, Algeria, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Indonesia, India, Egypt, Argentina, Nigeria and Senegal were members of the group, they said.

The Indian prime minister’s environment plan was the most substantial contribution on the theme at the summit so far.

Several previous speakers have raised the topic, though they have differed on the extent to which the rich countries are responsible for clearing up the mess created throughout the world by smokestack industries and land abuse.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed took a tougher line. He charged that in deserts of the United States, underground water was pumped up to water golf courses for luxury hotels instead of to re-forest the deserts.

“Instead, poor countries are being forced not to extract wealth from their forests in order to keep the environment safe for the rich,” he told the summit Monday.