Ten years ago the United Nations sponsored the first conference of governments on global population. Held in Bucharest, the conference was spearheaded by the United States and planned as a rally in support of the notion that population was growing too rapidly around the world and that the right prescription was family planning. But Bucharest did not turn out as planned. Such developing giants as India and China questioned the cure, and the rallying cry became, rather, that development is the best contraceptive. The conferees produced a grandly-named World Population Plan of Action which, though it acknowledged the role of family planning and contraception, had more than one plan in its platform.

Caldwell Taylor, a former teacher and journalist, was Grenada's Ambassador to the United Nations from September, 1980, to October, 1983, and Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1982 to October, 1983. Grenada's president, Maurice Bishop, was deposed by a military coup on October 13 and murdered on October 19. The United States invaded Grenada on October 25. —Eds.