Ghana’s Charges Strongly Denied

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30234, 12 September 1963, Page 11

Ghana’s Charges Strongly Denied

(N-Z.P.X.-Retcler—Copynynt) NEW YORK, September 10. Britain delivered a stinging rejection in the Lnited Nations today of Ghana’s charges that Southern Rhodesia threatened the peace °J Africa. Britain demanded that the Security Council throw out the complaint.

In one of the strongest statement* he has ever made in the United Nations, the chief British dedegate. Sir Patrick Dean. attacked Ghana’s arguments poirrt by pomt. accusing the .Accra Government of a “complete rr.isur.deratanding" of the situation.

He affirmed that the reversion of Southern Rhodesian armed forces to the colonly after dissolution of the Central African Federation •t the end of this year would leave Britain in full control of their use outside its frontiers.

"They will be no more available for external adventures than at present.” he said. The Southern Rhodesian Government would have responsibility for their use internally. The Security Council adjourned until tomorrow, when the United States and Morocco are listed to speak. Opening the African case yesterday. Mr Alex QuaisonSackey. of Ghana, asserted that conflict in Africa was bound to follow what he called the "transfer” of the forces of Southern Rhodesia.

Those forces w'ere neither more nor less under the control of the British Government now than they would be under Southern Rhodesia so long as Britain continued to exercise the same degree of responsibility in the colony, Sir Patrick Dean said today. Any attempt to call into question the Victoria Falls dissolution pact could only crept e a State of uncertainty in Central Africa. Yet this attempt had been made by Ghana, Morocco and the United Arab Republic in raising the matter in the council, he said. "Peace Not Threatened”

Sir Patrick Dean reaffirmed Britain’s contention that the council was not competent to deal with the matter because, he said, there was no threat to the peace, for the maintenance of which it has primary responsibility. There was no "explosive” situation in Southern Rhodesia, as had been charged. The British delegate dismissed Ghanaian charges that the Southern Rhodesia Air Force could be used for the "indiscriminate” bombing of Africans with napalm and other incendiary material. These charges were based on the “purest fancy and hypothesis.”