CARDA's Director General, Prof. Adel El-Beltagy, was elected Chairman of the International Desert Development Commission  (IDDC) at its fifth conference in the United States, 12-17 August.  The Conference, which was subtitled The Endless Frontier, took place at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas--a town which claims to have "the biggest feedlot in the world". The Conference was organized by the Texas Tech Office of International Affairs and the International Center for Arid and Semiarid Land Studies under the auspices of the IDDC. It was decided in Lubbock that the next Confer-ence would be held at ICARDA's Tel Hadya headquarters in 1999. Prof. El-Beltagy was, in fact, one of  the three founders of the IDDC 15 years ago.
        Previous conferences took place in Beijing, Mexico and Cairo. At the Confer-ence in Texas, the organization changed its name to the Inter-national Drylands Development Com-mission.
       Prof. El-Beltagy gave the keynote address, and ICARDA researchers presented four papers at the Conference.
        In his keynote address, Prof. El-Beltagy talked about ICARDA's work to combat desertification and to bring about increased food production in  harmony with the protection of the natural-resource base. He also emphasized the need for high technology to be harnessed to the fight against desertification. 
        The name-change reflected one of the themes of the conference as a whole; many of the conference participants felt that desertification is a major threat to food supplies and must be looked at in the context of drylands as a whole; the steppe, for example, is not desert.
        The five other ICARDA speakers were Dr Theib Oweis, who presented a paper on the use of GIS to identify

water-harvesting potential; Dr Ahmed Osman, who spoke on rangeland development issues; Dr Mohammed Abdel Moneim of ICARDA's Cairo office, who briefed the participants on the activities of the Nile Valley and Red Sea Regional Program (NVRSRP); and Dr Salvatore Ceccarelli and Dr Stefania Grando, who talked about barley breeding.
        The post of Secretary-General of the IDDC was not the only honor conferred upon Prof. Dr Beltagy during the week. He was also made an Honorary Citizen of Lubbock, Texas.