Bias for Biafra denied

NIGERIA'S Catholic bishops have denied statements that Pope Paul is politically involved in the Nigerian-Biafran war. They held a two-day meeting in Lagos after a delegation, led by Archbishop Aggey of Lagos, returned from discussions in Rome with the Pope and Vatican officials on the war and relief efforts.
They said the Pope was involved only in efforts to bring peace to Nigeria and to aid war victims. Charges of Catholic support for the breakaway state of Biafra "may have arisen from a serious misunderstanding of the Church's mission."
Nigerian radio, television and newspapers have been attacking Church relief agencies working in Biafra, saying they have flown in military supplies and given other aid to the
Biafrans. The Nigerian Catholic Secretariat in Lagos has denied this, and the bishops have called for worldwide relief efforts to aid all victims of the war. Mgr. Carlo Bayer, secretarygeneral of Caritas Internationalis, denied that the organisation was providing the Biafrans with money to buy arms, and stated categorically that its only concern was to get food and medicines to the people suffering on both sides of the conflict.
The Catholic Secretariat in Lagos said: "As the declared aim of Caritas is the spread of Christian charity throughout the world it would be ridiculous and contradictory if an organisation with a purely humanitarian aim should traffic in arms and support the recruitment of mercenaries."
DEATH RATE DOWN
As a result of relief supplies flown in, the death rate among children in Biafra has been considerably lowered, according to Canon Burgess Carr. Africa secretary for InterChurch Aid at the World Council of Churches.
Canon Carr, of the Anglican Church in Liberia. who returned to Geneva recently from a two-week visit to Nigeria and Biafra, said: "In Igbere I was told the death rate had vanished. At one of the camps I visited there were 58 deaths of children in September. There were only three deaths in the last six weeks."
More than 900 camps in Biafra were providing food for 1,400 people, mostly women and children, said Canon Carr. Most of it was reaching the camps through the churches in Biafra, and church relief agencies.
"A number of schools are now emergency hospitals", he said, "treating mostly children suffering from protein deficiency. The fewer deaths among children can be linked directly with the efficient church-sponsored feeding and medical programmes."
But he said the situation in villages where there were no camps and no improvised hospital and clinical care was rapidly deteriorating. The Biafran harvest of vegetable and provision foods had been lost, there were frequent reports of people eating half-grown crops to keep alive.