23315: (Chamberlain) UN-Island Nations (Haiti mentioned) (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By KIM GAMEL

   UNITED NATIONS, Sept 29 (AP) -- Small island states pleaded for more aid
as they face a devastating hurricane season and warned that the threat of
climate change was as urgent as the fight against terrorism and should get
the same attention.
   Leaders and foreign ministers from the Pacific island of Kiribati to the
Caribbean paradise of St. Kitts and Nevis issued pleas for countries to
ratify the Kyoto treaty on global warming, saying in many instances their
very existence was at stake.
   "We have demonstrated remarkable solidarity in the fight against global
terrorism. Can we not demonstrate the same in the fight against climate
change and sea level rise?" Kiribati's President Anote Tong said Tuesday in
a speech to the U.N. General Assembly's annual ministerial meeting.
   Many low-lying island nations fear they will be swamped by rising sea
levels blamed on climate change and are pressing for ratification of the
1997 treaty aimed at cutting production of greenhouse gases blamed for
warming the atmosphere.
   President Bush abandoned the Kyoto accord, which would require
industrial countries to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to
below 1990 levels by 2012.
   Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves of St. Vincent and the Grenadines called
for "urgent action," saying climate change, "if left unchecked, could lead
in this century to a global human and economic calamity."
   Island diplomats also stressed concerns about fishing rights, coastal
erosion, development issues and natural disasters as the 59th General
Assembly opened last week with erratic Hurricane Jeanne bearing down on
Florida after devastating Haiti.
   Haiti's interim President Boniface Alexandre made a personal appeal to
the assembly when it opened a week ago.
   "In the face of this tragedy ... I appeal urgently for the solidarity of
the international community so it may once again support the government in
the framework of emergency assistance," he said.
   Timothy Harris, foreign minister of St. Kitts and Nevis, pressed for a
global development fund to assist small island nations after natural
disasters.
   He pointed to the neighboring island of Grenada, where 39 people were
killed and 90 percent of homes were damaged in Hurricane Ivan.
   "Grenada's devastation within three hours of Hurricane Ivan dramatizes
for us how a generation of developmental progress can be wiped out in a
small vulnerable nation," he said Tuesday.
   Islanders in the Pacific and elsewhere also report steady erosion of
shorelines from rising seas and some small, low-lying islands already have
vanished beneath the waves.
   Scientists have projected that global warming could cause sea levels to
rise as much as 3 feet in some places over the next century and that
warming will increase the frequency and severity of storms and flooding.
   President Fradique de Menezes of Sao Tome and Principe, an island in the
Gulf of Guinea, urged the international community to commit more resources
to sustainable development of small islands.
   "Sao Tome and Principe continues to see our very existence threatened by
global warming," he said Friday in his address to the Assembly, adding he
feared his nation would end up "nothing but a tiny volcanic peak sticking
above the waves."