OAS.

• Position: Organization of American States is given a statue of Christopher Columbus by Russian diplomat - Brief Article

A Russian-made statue of Christopher Columbus, entitled Birth of a New World, was presented to the OAS in honor of its fiftieth anniversary at a special ceremony in the Hall of the Americas on September 9. The Russian ambassador to the United States, Yuli Vorontsov, who made the official presentation to Secretary General Cesar Gaviria, commented that Columbus is appreciated in Russia for his immense importance to the history of the New World.

The gift to the OAS is a three-foot tall replica of a full-scale statue being planned by prominent Russian sculptor Zurab Tsereteli. A prolific artist, Tsereteli is the president of the Russian Academy of Arts and serves as a UNESCO goodwill ambassador. The full sculpture is to be constructed and placed in Puerto Rico by the year 2000 as the second of a two-part composition retracing the route of "discovery" of the Americas. Puerto Rico was chosen as the permanent site for the statue because it is the only U.S.-administered territory in the hemisphere where the Italian explorer and his crew actually set foot. The first part of the composition, Birth of a New Man, was erected in Seville, Spain, in 1995.

At the ceremony, Gaviria remarked, "Much as the Nina carried Christopher Columbus and the aspirations of the Old World across the oceans to our shores, the OAS is poised to serve as the vessel that will transport our hemisphere across the divide of time into the new millennium."

New Business for Young Americas

The first meeting of the Young Americas Business Fund (YABF), a new private-sector initiative of the OAS, took place at the organization's headquarters in mid-September. The YABF will sponsor programs designed to train and develop skilled and semi-skilled workers from a developing nation's employable youth, encourage entrepreneurial initiatives that will create employment, and give special emphasis to technology as part of this process, including using the internet to provide resource links and other innovations. To accomplish its goals, the YABF creates a framework for governments and the private sector to sponsor programs jointly or provide venture capital through privately supported trusts that attract matching government and international funds.

As developing economies rapidly move from their traditional agricultural base, technology and training are essential...