The World - News from Nov. 6, 1987

African leader Moise Mensah, challenging the controversial 12-year tenure of Edouard Saouma as director general of the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, said he has enough support to win the job in an election scheduled for next week. Mensah, a senior official of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, another U.N. agency based in Rome, is the only challenger to Saouma for a six-year term as FAO head. Critics of Saouma, a Lebanese, have attacked him for being autocratic in running the FAO. Mensah, from Benin, has the endorsement of the Organization of African Unity and a number of industrialized nations and countries in the Caribbean and Asia. Mensah said he is confident that he will win the post in next Monday’s vote.