A panel of theologians and religious leaders has strongly defended international proposals to slow population growth as a moral effort to s^fye the lives of women and children and to strengthen the family, says a USIS release datellned Washington. August 28.

The reverend Dr Gordon Summers, president of- the National Council of Churches, composed of most of the major US Protestant denominations, said August 24 that the upcoming International Conference on Population and Development is trying to expand access of women and children to education and , health programmes.

Better education and family planning services would strengthen the family, he said in reply to a question during a news conference called to counter criticism of the international conference by the Vatican and some Muslim theologians.

Delegates from ISO countries are expected at the conference sponsored by the United Nations to be held in Cairo, Egypt September 5-13. The countries have reached a great deal of agreement in the three years of negotiations leading up to the conference.

But the Vatican and a hand-

ful of heavily Roman Catholic countries. Joined in recent weeks by leaders of Al Azhar Islamic University in Cairo, one pf the world centres of Muslim learning, have charged that the drSff of arr Agreement to be discussed at the Cajro conference condones extramarital sex and would permit easier access to abortion, thereby undermining the cohesiveness of the family.

“I don’t accept that. Sommers said. Programmes proposed in the draft agreement have been designed to help families cope with poverty, Illiteracy and the desire to limit family size, he said.

Rabbi Balfour Brickner. former director of international relations for the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. the organization of Reform Jewish congregations, said that one of the few references to abortion in the draft document is that it be safe and rare

Daniel Maguire, professor of moral theology at Marquette University, said that the document talks about the primacy of the family.

"There is nothing that indicates a call for promiscuous lifestyles, indeed on the con-trary." he said.

. Brickner said that the document makes clear that it is

against any form of coercion for abortion or family planning.

Nowhere in the document does the world population 'control' occur." he said.

Maguire argued that ttif document's' negotiators were' working against a background of dwindling fish stocks, an increase in erosion of arable soils, a slowdown in the rate of increase of food production and rapid rises in population.

These kinds of trends are forcing countries to think about how to slow the growth of populations, he said.

The United Nations has estimated that there are now 5.660 million people In the world and projects that the number will rise to 8.500 million by 2025 and 10.000 million by 2050.

He said there was a remarkable amount of agreement sb far on the proposed Cairo document, including creating programmes for the empowerment of women, protection of children, greater aid from industrialized countries and abolition of poverty.

The only area of disagreement is on safe contraception and abortion being made more widely available and only with the Vatican, several other Roman Catholic countries and perhaps a few Muslim states, he said.