[PEN-L:9747] 1/3 of Russians in Poverty; US Blocks Query on VX Gas; Colombian Strike Looms

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IN THIS MESSAGE:   1/3 of Russians in Poverty; US Blocks Query on VX Gas;
Colombian Strike Looms

Study: 1/3 of Russians in Poverty

By Nick Wadhams
Associated Press Writer
Friday, July 30, 1999; 11:20 a.m. EDT

MOSCOW (AP) -- More than one in three Russians is living below the official
poverty line, according to government figures released Friday, the latest sign
of the wreckage left by last year's economic meltdown.

About 35 percent of the population, or 51.7 million people, received monthly
salaries below Russia's minimum subsistence level of 872 rubles ($36) during
the first half of the year, the Russian Statistics Agency said.

That figure was up from 22 percent living in poverty during the same period
last year, when the minimum monthly subsistence level averaged out to
about 429 rubles ($71 at the time).

Some economists say the figure overstates the poverty problem somewhat
because many Russians make money in the economy's informal sector and
don't declare their income to the government.

Still, the figures reflect the dramatic decline in living standards that has
been
taking place throughout this decade.

The financial crash last August resulted in widespread job layoffs and pay
cuts, sent inflation soaring, and pushed millions more into poverty.

In more fallout from the crisis, imports crashed by 46 percent in the first six
months of 1999, while exports fell by 11 percent, the agency said.

After the ruble devaluation, many imports became prohibitively expensive for
Russians. The agency didn't give exact foreign-trade volumes, but monthly
figures show exports totaled $34.4 billion against imports of $19.6 billion, for
a trade surplus at around $14.8 billion for the first half of the year. Russia's
trade surplus was just $900 million from January to June of 1998.

              © Copyright 1999 The Associated Press
=======================================

U.S. Blocks Questions About VX Gas

By Edith M. Lederer
Associated Press Writer
Friday, July 30, 1999; 4:16 a.m. EDT

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The United States has blocked China and France
from asking weapons inspectors questions about the use of small quantities
of the deadly VX nerve agent left in a Baghdad laboratory.

Hasmy Agam, Security Council president and Malaysia's U.N. ambassador,
had circulated a letter to Secretary-General Kofi Annan with questions to the
U.N. inspectors from France and China, which asked for proof that VX wasn't
used to contaminate Iraqi missile warheads.

The United States on Thursday objected to France's questions, which U.S.
officials felt trivialized the issue of disarming Iraq and focused unfairly on
weapons inspectors from the U.N. Special Commission, or UNSCOM. The
letter to Annan has not been sent.

The issue of VX became a flash point for the Security Council last year when
the United States found traces of the nerve agent on fragments of Iraqi
missile warheads. Iraq has admitted producing 3.9 tons of VX agent, but has
denied loading the deadly agent into missile warheads.

Seven vials containing tiny quantities of VX were among the chemical and
biological material left in a Baghdad laboratory when inspectors pulled out of
Iraq in mid-December on the eve of U.S. and British airstrikes. Iraq barred
them from returning.

France, China and Russia -- Iraq's closest allies on the Security Council --
urged the council to have the samples analyzed, intimating inspectors may
have laced Iraqi warheads with the agent.

But the majority of the 15-member council agreed with the weapons
inspectors, who said the VX could only be used to calibrate equipment used
to test for the nerve agent, posed no danger, and should be destroyed.

A team of independent chemical experts sent to Baghdad to make the
laboratory safe went ahead and destroyed the VX samples on Tuesday. But
China and France wanted UNSCOM to answer questions about why VX was
in the lab and why most of it wasn't destroyed if it degrades after about a
year.

One question proposed by France asked whether equipment in the Baghdad
laboratory was used to analyze the Iraqi warheads before they were sent to
the American lab which found the VX traces.

Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin accused the Security Council of ordering
the destruction because it knew that UNSCOM inspectors had used the VX
to contaminate the warheads.

The issue of UNSCOM's lab in Baghdad comes as the Security Council is
debating a new policy toward Iraq. By drawing out the debate over a
seemingly clear-cut technical issue for several days, France, Russia and
China put the council on notice that they will closely scrutinize Iraq's
outstanding disarmament obligations -- and that reaching consensus will not
be easy.

              © Copyright 1999 The Associated Press
========================================


 July 30, 1999


 Dow Jones Newswires

 Colombia Ecopetrol Workers Plan Strike On Govt
 Reforms

 BOGOTA -- Workers at Colombia's state oil company Ecopetrol (E.ECO) will
 strike if Congress passes a controversial labor reform bill, the head of the
 company's labor union said Friday.

 Hernando Hernandez, president of Ecopetrol's Syndical Workers' Union, or USO,
 said on Colombian radio that "without any type of discussion and unanimously,
 the workers approved a general strike in all the installations of
Ecopetrol, with
 paralysis of production, if the Congress finally approves... to snatch away our
 conquests."

 He added that USO members had given the union's bosses the power to declare
 the strike "at the opportune moment."

 Over one-half of Ecopetrol's roughly 10,000 workers are affiliated to USO,
which
 frequently calls strikes to protest at government policy.

 It has carried out at least three brief labor stoppages in the year to date.

 The government's labor reform package - scheduled to go before Congress
 imminently - aims to make more flexible the hiring and firing arrangements of
 Colombian employers. It includes proposals to introduce a sliding scale of
 indemnity payments, eliminate overtime rates between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. and
 allow employers to count some public holidays as vacation time.

 No comment was available from Ecopetrol.

  - By Mary Morrison; 571-215-7132;
 mmorrison@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


 Briefing Book for: E.ECO