The World - News from Sept. 30, 1988

The Kremlin has adopted measures aimed at reversing an ecological disaster in the Aral Sea, which has shrunk by a third over the past 20 years, the government newspaper Izvestia reported. The Soviet government and Communist Party Central Committee have adopted a resolution to cut irrigation projects in a desert region of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to increase the flow of water into the inland sea, Izvestia said. In January, the magazine Ogonyok reported that the irrigation scheme for a huge cotton-growing area has caused the sea to recede more than 60 miles as its level dropped by more than 40 feet. The sea has become too shallow for ships and too saline to support fish, Ogonyok said.