British girl to talk tiger with PM Gujral

Jenny Osgood, sweet sixteen Britisher, wants an urgent audience with Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral. And she is getting it too, on October 3 in New Delhi.

The Osgood-Gujral talks will be, informed sources reveal, a completely uni-pronged affair. During the entire length, Osgood will talk Indian tigers with the PM -- or rather, the peril they are in and the remedies that need be taken.

Osgood, who is flying down from her home in Newquay in Cornwall (together with her mother) exclusively for the talks, will bring down a petition with 7,000 fellow tiger-lovers's signatures -- one for each tiger left in the wild -- to present Gujral.

Osgood's crusade deserves special mention, as she is doing all this despite severe asthma. So severe, in fact, that she can't even attend school. She compiled the petition by approaching people in her area after being moved by the Environmental Investigation Agency's work for the Indian tiger.

Her meeting is being arranged by the EIA in co-operation with Indian concerns like the Tiger Link and Sanctuary magazine.

Osgood will take part in the 'Wildlife Week'. She will accompany Bombay nature clubs on their conservation awareness-raising tours and even venture into a tiger reserve to see for the first time real, live tigers.

UNI