Cable briefs

Press, 5 March 1984, Page 10

Cable briefs

Successor meeting

A successor to Canada’s Prime Minster, Mr Pierre Trudeau, will be chosen at a four-day convention of the governing Liberal Party in Ottawa in June, says the party president, lona Campagnolo. A former Finance Minister, John Turner, who quit the Trudeau Cabinet in 1975 over policy differences, is tipped to take over the leadership and therefore succeed Mr Trudeau as Prime Minister.—Ottawa. Africa agreement South Africa and its black neighbour, Mozambique, have reached agreement on a broad-based mutual security pact, officials from both countries say. After day-long negotiations between officials of the once hostile neighbours, the Foreign Minister, Mr Roelof Botha, who headed the South African delegation, said: “Both delegations agreed on the principal features of the non-aggres-sion and good-neighbourliness agreement between the two countries. The thrust of the agreement is that’ it will provide that neither of the two countries will serve as a base for acts of aggression or violence against the other.”— Cape Town.

Vodka problem A group of remote villages in central Russia are getting regular vodka supplies by horse but have not had any bread for months, a Moscow newspaper reports. Describing the Ugran region, near Smolensk, as the “drunken forest,” “Sovietskaya Rossiya” said that some of the villages had up to three vodka shops, all of them illegal, and none selling any other foodstuffs. Admitting that there had been no bread on sale for months, one local official told the newspaper it could not be delivered because there were no roads. Asked how the vodka got in, he replied “by horse.” The official confessed that he had never thought of having bread delivered the same way.—Moscow. Traffic lights

The city of Buenos Aires, lacking funds to buy bulbs for traffic lights, has authorised workers to remove the bulbs from yellow caution lights to replace burned-out bulbs in red and green lights. Horacio Manuel Tolosa, the city’s public works secretary, said that the municipality lacked the $79,000 to pay for the 32,000 40 to 60-watt bulbs needed.— Buenos Aires.