Abortion Accord Unravels at Talks : Population: There are charges that the Vatican has ‘hijacked’ Cairo conference. A new compromise is sought as some Latin nations oppose consensus.

Amid accusations that the Vatican has “hijacked” the conference on global population, U.N. delegations returned in frustration to the drawing board Wednesday after a parade of Latin American nations joined the Pope in opposing a compromise on abortion.

Several African and East European states also abandoned the teetering consensus reached Tuesday night, under which abortion would not be promoted in family planning programs and individual nations would decide whether or not to legalize the procedure.

More than a dozen nations met in closed-door sessions with the Vatican representative to try to work out a new compromise, focusing primarily on objections to characterizing abortions as “safe” or “unsafe” and describing them as “legal” in some countries--terms that the Vatican says could pave the way toward creating a new international right to abortion.

“The concept of a ‘right to abortion’ would be entirely innovative in the international community and would be contrary to the constitutional and legislative positions of many states, as well as being alien to the sensitivities of vast numbers of persons, believers and unbelievers alike,” the Vatican’s chief delegate, Archbishop Renato R. Martino, told the conference Wednesday.

The abortion issue, to the frustration and occasional fury of both sides, has dominated the agenda of this huge international gathering, aimed at adopting a global population strategy for the next 20 years that will hold the world’s population to 7.2 billion.

Despite confident assertions that 92% of the program’s wide-ranging and often groundbreaking new policies had been agreed upon in advance, discussion of critical issues such as expanded reproductive health care, empowerment of women, refugees and migration has been held up for days as delegates have attempted to resolve the abortion controversy. In the conference hallways, a new lapel button has appeared with increasing frequency: “I Am Poped Out.”

Delegations from Scandinavia, Europe and the United States--left impatiently on the sidelines as the optimism of Tuesday night disappeared--said there will be a final attempt to try to win over the Vatican and its allies and then the conference document will be adopted with or without them.

By the end of the day, only five nations--Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Ecuador and Malta--looked to be firm holdouts on the abortion issue.

“We will exercise a lot of patience and try to bury our frustrations,” said Timothy E. Wirth, U.S. undersecretary of state for global affairs and head of the U.S. delegation. In the end, he said, “there will be dissenters from the document. There is no other way, when some of the delegations have such strong feelings. . . . The U.N. system works on consensus. Consensus doesn’t mean unanimity. It means consensus.”

An informal working group of 13 nations was given until Friday morning to try to work through the conflict. Conference organizers also delayed until Friday discussion of the controversial issues of the right of access to birth control services, sexual and reproductive rights and reproductive health.

A variety of delegations and organizations supporting more liberal abortion policies angrily accused the Vatican of holding the entire discussion of global population policy hostage to the abortion issue.

The National Audubon Society asserted that the conference had been “hijacked by . . . the Vatican, which seeks to impose its own view on others.”

Frances Kissling, president of Catholics for a Free Choice, was even more vehement. “How come a country (Vatican City), a so-called country, that is in essence 800 square acres of office space in the middle of Rome, that has a citizenry that excludes women and children, seems to attract the most attention in talking about public policy that deals with women and children?” she demanded.

But several delegations allied with the Vatican on the abortion issue predicted that no global population strategy can be strong and effective if it fails to take into account the concerns of many of the world’s nations about abortion.

“You have to give humane solutions to human problems. . . . I think the United Nations should give options that are within the principles of the United Nations, and poor countries should not be obliged to accept things that are against their principles,” said Marta Casco, a member of the Honduras delegation.

Honduras was one country that objected to characterizing abortion as safe or unsafe, emphasizing the belief that all abortions are unsafe for the fetus. But Casco predicted it will be impossible to reach a compromise.

“There will be differences that will never be solved in that room,” she said. “And if it (the document) comes without consensus, it will be a very weak document.”

Yet the new objections raised Wednesday morning were a source of bitter irritation for countries that had sought a more liberal abortion policy but had, in the interest of compromise, settled for relatively limited language emphasizing national sovereignty and restricting abortion as a family planning tool.

“The European Union is not going to accept deleting any reference to safety, any reference to the legal situation,” said Wouter Meijer, a member of the Dutch delegation. “These countries (refuse) to accept that in some countries, (abortion) is legal, because for them it is the ultimate crime. The fact is that in many countries, abortion under certain conditions is acceptable.”

Actress Jane Fonda, designated a “goodwill ambassador” to the conference, appeared in a flurry of camera flashes and television lights to lend her voice to the push to improve health care services and political rights for women. She urged delegates to “keep debate focused on the broad agenda, in spite of efforts to do the contrary.”

Fonda’s speech was only one of hundreds of sidelights at the huge conference, where more than 15,000 delegates and non-governmental organization representatives are focusing on every imaginable aspect of population, from migration patterns from farms to cities to sex education and the effects of domestic violence on women.

Booths at the forum of non-governmental organizations, which adjoined the conference, feature everything from the International Planned Parenthood Federation’s materials to the Right To Life Assn.’s model embryos. An Indian faith-healing group and a Cairo garbage collectors association (developers of an innovative recycling program) have also set up shop.

But even in discussion groups on widely divergent topics, talk inevitably touches on the abortion issue, which has consumed the attention of almost everyone. Thus, it was with no small degree of exhilaration Tuesday night that many delegations believed a compromise had been cinched, only to see the Vatican stand up at the last minute and oppose it, eliciting a chorus of boos.

The amended version under discussion at the time, which also included U.S. calls for post-abortion counseling, education and family planning services, had won support from at least 39 widely divergent nations, including many Islamic countries and the European Union.

By Wednesday morning, a line of Latin American, African and East European countries began proposing amendments, and the drafting committee in frustration tabled the matter and referred it to an informal working group.

Egypt, as host country, twice pleaded with the committee to speed up its deliberations and move on to other issues.

“If they are asking us to be flexible on an issue such as abortion, we have to explain our reasons for not accepting it,” said Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

“(But) if no consensus is reached on this particular issue, we can simply voice our reservations.”