HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK ---------------------------
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0201/04/world/world7.htmlSydney Morning Herald
January 4, 2002
Agence France-Presse
Anti-green conspiracy revealed, 30 years on
Paris: A secret club of seven wealthy countries
plotted to hamstring the first United Nations
conference on the environment in 1972 to protect the
nations' economic interests.The "cabal", which called itself the Brussels Group,
comprised Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Italy,
the Netherlands and the United States, New Scientist
reports.Representatives from these countries held a series of
secret meetings in the run-up to the 1972 Stockholm
Conference in which they decided to crimp the
ambitious agenda of environmentalists and disregard
concerns for the Third World, it says.The evidence comes from papers that have just been
released through Britain's "30-year rule", under which
confidential official documents must be placed in the
public domain after three decades unless they relate
to vital national security.A note written by a British Foreign Office public
servant after an early meeting in July 1971 described
the Brussels Group as "an unofficial policy-making
body to concert the views of the principal governments
concerned".Referring to the likelihood of criticism "from the
Swedes and others", the note urged that the group "not
... include awkward bedfellows".The 1972 forum, formally called the United Nations
Conference on the Human Environment, was the first
global conference on environment perils.The conference's secretariat was headed by Maurice
Strong, then head of the Canadian foreign aid agency.
He campaigned for the agenda to be broad and ambitious
and embrace issues that, today, are mainstream
concerns, such as deforestation, urbanisation and
development in poorer countries.But the confidential papers say lobbying by the
Brussels Group ensured the agenda was limited to a
small number of subjects, such as cross-border
pollution, and did not touch trade or economic
activities.Britain, for its part, campaigned on behalf of the
controversial Anglo-French supersonic jet Concorde,
then in production.At the top of its list of subjects that it wanted
excluded from Stockholm's action plan were controls on
sonic booms and pollution in the upper atmosphere.Although the Stockholm Conference's achievements are
largely limited to high-minded declarations, the event
at least launched a new agency, the UN Environment
Program.Agence France-Presse
==^================================================================ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
