The World - News from April 4, 1988

Huge swarms of desert locusts edging closer to North African crop areas have created a critical situation requiring massive international aid to forestall disaster, Adel Cortas, an official of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, said in Rabat, Morocco. He said that Tunisia has requested 50 tons of pesticide, 350 mechanical sprayers and 50 two-way radios to confront the swarms, which have devastated olive, fig and pomegranate plantations in the south. Algeria needs to treat 4.4 million acres of infested areas in the next 2 months. “The situation is critical,” Cortas said. “We have to be very careful and constantly on the watch. A change of wind could spell disaster.”