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£26 million. A statement on population issues from the world
science academies would be valuable. He hoped that academies
would be able to resist the pressure from certain religious
quarters to make the statement rather less upbeat than it ought
to be. The product of the New Delhi Conference would be timely,
given that the UN International Conference on Population and
Development was due to take place in Cairo in 1994.
24. Sir Francis Graham-Smith recalled that academies most
actively involved in setting up the Conference of Science
Academies on Population Issues had been those of the UK, USA, Sweden and India. These took the lead among a group of sixteen sponsoring academies. The Royal Society was acting, in effect,
as secretariat for the Conference: it had raised enough money to employ a conference officer. Sir Michael Atiyah said that
although it had originally been intended that the Science
Academies Conference would be held in Europe, the Indians had
offered to host it, an offer welcomed by the other participants.
They hoped that the Conference might be inaugurated by the Indian
Prime Minister. Dr McLaren added that the Science Academies
Conference had been deliberately timed to provide an input to the
UN Cairo Conference, in the planning of which she was herself involved. She said that Lady Chalker had played an important and influential role in raising the profile of population issues
globally.
SOUTH AFRICA
A
25. Dr McLaren said that there was some cause for optimism. new Academy of Sciences was in the process of being formed in
South Africa: it would bring together representatives of all racial communities. A draft constitution had now been prepared for this academy. She hoped that the academy would be in
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