EVENTS
CLINTON ANNOUNCES JOBS SUMMIT President Clinton said Sunday that the Group of Seven (G-7) industrial powers will hold a conference in March on creating jobs. In a speech to young Europeans in Brussels, Mr. Clinton said the meeting was part of a strategy for renewing the world's advanced economies in a follow-up to last month's landmark GATT agreement liberalizing world trade. (Belgian reaction to Clinton, Page 1.) Americans could learn from Europe about job training and apprenticeship but could also teach Europe something about the flexibility and mobility of labor and job creation, he said. The United States will host the conference, to be attended by Japan, Canada, Britain, Germany, France, and Italy. Unemployment rates in the G-7 countries range from just 2.8 percent in Japan and 6.4 percent in the US to 8.1 percent in Germany and 12 percent in France. Among the range of issues to be addressed at the summit are competition from low-wage countries, the abolition of manual labor by advanced technology, and the failure of many nations to find new job-creating technology. NAFTA to stand
The Supreme Court yesterday let stand a ruling that allowed the North American Free Trade Agreement to win congressional approval without a formal statement on its likely environmental effects. The court, without comment, rejected arguments by the citizens' groups Public Citizen and the Sierra Club that even though their challenge became moot when NAFTA was approved in November, the issue remains alive because President Clinton plans to submit a new global trade agreement to Congress for approval. The groups said the NAFTA agreement will harm air quality in US cities along the Mexican border and jeopardize US laws on recycling, auto emissions, and the transportation of hazardous materials. Mexico mediation
A controversial church leader has agreed to a rebel request to mediate in talks to end a peasant uprising in southern Mexico, calling on his countrymen to build a new nation in response to 10 days of bloody revolt. Samuel Ruiz, the Roman Catholic bishop of San Cristobal de las Casas in the conflict zone of southernmost Chiapas state, said yesterday he believed Guatemalan Nobel laureate Rigoberta Menchu would also join in the mediation effort, as requested by the rebels. More than 100 people have been killed since rebels, calling themselves the Zapatista National Liberation Army, launched their uprising on New Year's Day by seizing six towns in the impoverished state. Relief flights halted
Relief agencies suspended aid flights to Sarajevo yesterday because Bosnia's warring sides would not guarantee the planes' safety. (Bleak outlook in Bosnia, Page 7.) Sarajevo's 380,000 residents depend almost entirely on those flights for food, medicine, and other materials to survive the harsh Balkan winter and the nearly 21-month Serb siege. Serb shelling had shut down the airport for five days last week. It was just reopened on Sunday.
