Cable Briefs

Press, 18 February 1978, Page 6

Cable Briefs

Unions split

New South Wales and Victorian unionists have ’ split over the acceptance of; an Australian Council of Trade Unions recommendation that existing uraniumexporting contracts be met. The N.S.W. Labour Council voted to accept the A.C.T.U.’s new uranium policy, but in Melbourne the Victorian Trades Hall Council decided to oppose it. The A.C.T.U. policy, decided at a 1 special Federal union conference held in Sydney last week, was that existing uranium contracts should he filled but that bans should be placed on any new developments until adequate safeguards could be developed. I — Sydney.

‘ll,OOO mercenaries 9 A Rhodesian nationalist leader, Joshua Nkomo, has said that some 11,200 mercenaries, including 600 Israeli commandos, are fighting against nationalist guerrillas in Rhodesia. Mr Nkomo, co-leader of the Patriotic Front guerrilla alliance, told a press conference his information came from a “co-operative Western source.” Mr Nkomo also said that the front had agreed in principle at the Malta talks with the British Foreign Secretary (Dr David Owen) and the United States envoy, Andrew Young, to the United Nations or another neutral organisation supervising elections leading to majority rule in Rhodesia. The matter would be discussed at the next round of talks. — Lusaka. Surgery order A Massachusetts judge has ordered potentially life-sav-ing surgery for a 43-day-old baby, born with severe mental and physical defects, despite her parents’ plea that she be allowed to die. An Essex County probate judge, Henry Mayo, in what was believed the first decision of its kind in Massachusetts, ordered that Kerri Ann McNulty undergo surgery to repair a defective artery. Kerri Ann, who has remained at Tufts-New England Medical Centre since her birth, suffers from defects including blindness, deafness, heart failure, and artery deformities. Doctors have testified she will probably be mentally retarded and require institutional care for the rest of her life. — Salem.