BY ROLLANDE GIRARD
PARIS - The 14th World Festival of Students and Youth "will allow people from around the world to discuss problems facing the international youth movement today, such as solidarity, the right to education, democracy, health care, sovereignty, self- determination, young women, children, sports, and discrimination," said Rogelio Polanco of the Union of Young Communists (UJC) of Cuba.
Polanco was addressing an international meeting here March 4, initiated by youth groups in France, to discuss plans for the event, which will be held in Cuba in the summer of 1997. Representatives from youth organizations in Algeria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Greece, Guadeloupe, India, Iraq, North Korea, Spain, the United States, Venezuela, Vietnam, and elsewhere participated in the meeting.
Many of the groups represented in this meeting are affiliates of the World Federation of Democratic Youth, which has organized previous world youth festivals.
The proposal for the 1997 gathering came out of the "Cuba Lives" international youth festival, which took place in Cuba and was attended by 1,300 people from over 60 countries. Polanco said hosts in Cuba are planning for 5,000-10,000 participants in the world festival. "Youth and student organizations in Cuba are already working on reducing the cost by proposing the delegates be lodged by Cuban families," he said.
As part of building the festival, Nieves Iliana Hernandez of the UJC of Cuba will be touring eight countries in Eastern Europe later this year.