180 Nations Adopt Population Plan : Growth: U.N. conference ends by approving program to limit world’s people to 7.2 billion over the next two decades. It gets partial endorsement from the Vatican.

Over a chorus of reservations from Latin American and Islamic countries still troubled about abortion and family issues, nearly 180 nations adopted a wide-ranging plan Tuesday on global population, the first in history to obtain partial endorsement from the Vatican.

The plan, approved on the final day of the U.N. population conference here, for the first time tries to limit the growth of the world’s population, by preventing it from exceeding 7.2 billion people over the next two decades. It sets aside a focus on issues of contraception and demographic quotas alone in favor of broad new health care programs and the freedom for families to choose how many children they have.

It establishes a controversial new category of “reproductive rights” and emphasizes improving health, education and living standards for women in the expectation that they will then elect to have smaller families.

The Vatican, whose battle over the abortion issue dominated the nine-day International Conference on Population and Development, elected not to support contentious chapters dealing with abortion, extramarital sex and adolescent sex.

But the Holy See said there were enough positive elements in the program of action--including its linking of population to development, its stand against coercion in population policies and its promotion of women’s status and the family--that the church wished for the first time to join in an international consensus on population policy, if only partially.

The Roman Catholic Church refused to join either of the past two global population programs, adopted in 1974 in Bucharest, Romania, and in 1984 in Mexico City.

“Nothing that the Holy See has done in this consensus process should be understood or interpreted as an endorsement of concepts it cannot support for moral reasons,” Archbishop Renato Martino said.

“Especially nothing is to be understood to imply that the Holy See endorses abortion or has in any way changed its moral position concerning abortion or on contraceptives or sterilization nor on the use of condoms in HIV/AIDS prevention programs.”

A flock of nations shared the Vatican’s objections but elected to simply record them and join in a full consensus on the plan of action. The reservations--from Peru, Ecuador, Argentina, the Dominican Republic, the United Arab Emirates, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Paraguay, Brunei, Malta, Libya, Yemen and Iran--diminished the broad consensus that U.N. officials had hoped for.

Several other nations, including Egypt, Pakistan, Algeria, Afghanistan, Syria, Kuwait, Ghana, Jordan, Malaysia, Djibouti, Maldives, Indonesia and Tunisia, emphasized that the plan could be implemented only in the context of their Islamic laws, religion and culture.

Timothy E. Wirth, U.S. undersecretary of state for global affairs and head of the U.S. delegation, was nonetheless upbeat. “The consensus was much broader than anything we thought was going to be possible,” he said.

“I would remind you that two years ago at the Earth Summit in Rio, nations couldn’t even talk about the problem of population, it was so contentious. Imagine how much progress we’ve made in the last two years, when we cannot only talk about this and talk about it honestly and openly, but we can also come to agreement on a very, very progressive document,” Wirth said. “I think the world is never going to be the same after Cairo.”

Feminist organizations around the world, which had pushed for the idea that empowering women is the key to curbing population growth, were jubilant about the plan, though it fell short of the goal quietly expressed by many of making safe, legal abortion available worldwide.

Instead, it states that abortion is not to be used as a family-planning tool and emphasizes the responsibility of nations to deal with the health consequences of unsafe illegal abortion.

“It is very close to everything we hoped it would be. It’s like 98%,” said Joan Dunlap, head of the International Women’s Health Coalition.

“Population programs and policies have failed in many countries because they had no roots, and they have failed because they have not been just,” she said. “This approach says we need to focus on women’s fertility. It has shifted the focus to the individual woman and says if we meet her needs, not only is that just and humane, but we judge it will have a very successful demographic impact.”

But the International Right to Life Federation said the strong language emphasizing that abortion is not to be promoted for family planning, plus the widespread concern about the issue on the part of Latin American, African and Muslim countries, indicated that the conference was “clearly a defeat for the Clinton Administration.”

“It will be difficult for those governmental and non-governmental organizations in the U.S. and elsewhere who are dedicated to promoting abortion in the developing world to claim that this conference gave them a mandate to do so,” the organization said.

Vatican officials said much of the world may not yet be ready for the kind of far-reaching proposals envisioned in the program of action.

“These were new ideas, and the capacity to receive these new ideas was not fully as open as some of the planners expected,” said Bishop James McHugh.

Although the head-butting on abortion prompted new calls for review of the Vatican’s status as a full member in the United Nations, church officials said their vigorous input on abortion and family issues was a necessary ingredient of the debate.

“Any international effort, any international conference that attempts to run itself purely on secular principles, is doomed to failure,” McHugh said.

Indeed, a wide bloc of Islamic nations proved to be among the Vatican’s staunchest allies, arguing against non-traditional unions that might include homosexuality, safe sex and discussion of “individuals’ ” sexual activity, as opposed to sex within marriage.