News In Brief

US urges more signers of pact on ecology-damaging warfare

A 10-day review conference on a treaty outlawing methods of warfare that severely damage the environment opened here this week with a call by the United States for more nations to adhere to it.

Delegate sources said some countries were unhappy with the pact because the type of environmental warfare it prohibits is ill-defined.

The pact, which came into force in 1978, was negotiated partly because of concern over the US use of defoliants in the Vietnam war.