NEW YORK: International efforts to control population growth in the developing world could be fatally undermined following a decision by President Bush to slash millions of dollars of funding for a UN family planning programme.

The move to end US contributions to the UN’s population fund, and other aid programmes that provide assistance to women and children, will be announced in July, according to administration officials quoted in Saturday’s Washington Post. The move comes after intense pressure from anti-abortion groups and religious fundamentalists, who are opposed to the UN’s efforts.

The decision is likely to cause a storm of protest, and critics will cite it as yet another example of the Bush administration disregarding America’s global responsibility in order to satisfy domestic lobbying interests.

Anti-abortion groups have long claimed that US support of international family planning and education programmes is tantamount to promoting abortion and involuntary sterilisation.

In January, Bush withheld 34 million dollars in payments to the UN’s population fund after conservatives accused the UN of tacitly supporting China’s ‘one child per family’ abortion policy.

UN officials have long denied that its population programmes support forced abortions or sterilisation.

The other day, international aid organizers warned that although the UN programme would probably survive without US backing, America’s decision could seriously undermine its capacity to prevent 800,000 abortions and the deaths of 4,700 women and 77,000 children under the age of five.

Family planning groups say that by falsely identifying the UN’s work in China as supportive of the country’s reproductive policies, anti-abortion activists are now threatening a far larger global programme that not only seeks to help women on family planning but also promotes HIV and Aids prevention, health and education in more than 140 countries. Susan Cohen, director of government affairs for the Alan Guttmacher Institute, told the Washington Post that the most vulnerable of the world’s poorest countries would be the first to suffer.

‘It’s the women in 142 developing countries, including Afghanistan, which the White House purports to care about so much, who are going to suffer as a result of 34m dollars less going to prevent maternal death, infant death and abortions,’ Cohen said.

Anti-abortion groups have welcomed the decision. Deal Hudson, of the Catholic magazine Crisis, said: ‘It sends the message to the UN community that the administration is not going to be party to its ideological approach.’

US conservative anti-family planning groups have consistently sought to hitch US support for the UN and international aid agencies to their agenda and the latest move marks an escalation of that effort.

Last month, the US came close to boycotting a UN summit to advance the health, education and safety of children in developing countries after groups from the religious right labelled the conference’s call for ‘reproductive health services’ as a covert endorsement of abortion.—Dawn/The Observer News Service.