AFRICAN SUMMIT CONFERENCE

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30499, 22 July 1964, Page 17

AFRICAN SUMMIT CONFERENCE

Strong Nyerere Attack On Nkrumah (NJ. .P .A.-Reuter—Copyright) CAIRO, July 21. President Julius Nyerere, of the United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar, electrified yesterday morning’s session of the African Summit Conference in Cairo with a strong attack on President Kwame Nkrumah, of Ghana. “This Union Government business (Dr. Nkrumah’s proposal for a Union Government for Africa) has become a cover for doing some most unbrotherly things in Africa,” he said.

Referring to a speech yesterday in which Dr. Nkrumah attacked the work of the liberation committee, he said that if the Ghana President’s references to an “imperialist agent” meant his country, “then those who care for truth know that such a statement is a lie.”

work —that they should take action to free non-indepen-dent States in Africa, and not merely talk about it. A Ghana delegation spokesman said later that what his delegation hoped for was that the liberation committee should operate in Angola and other non-independent countries.

Dr. Nyerere called for more practice of unity and less preaching. The time for fine words had gone, he said.

It should act as an underground movement similar to those in occupied Europe during World War 11. Its work should be secret, whereas most of its reports had been circulated publicly at the Summit in Cairo, he said.

Use of the phrase “Union Government” merely for propaganda purposes would bring ridicule to the concept of African unitv.

The unity of Africa would have to be achieved step by step, Dr. Nyerere declared. He said the charges against the nine-nation African Liberation Committee were “curious,” coming from the only country which had not paid a penny to the committee since its establishment.

Speaking quietly but with emotion, Dr. Nyerere quoted passages from Dr. Nkrumah’s speech in which the Ghana leader said Leopoldville, capital of the former Belgian Congo, was the logical base for the liberation committee.

Dr. Nyerere went on: “But instead of using this ‘logical’ place, the O.A.U. decided to put the committee in a different place—a place where, to quote again, they have been ‘exposed to intrigues, frustrations and disappointments in the last eight months.’ ” If the President of Ghana believed the committee should be housed in Leopoldville, then “all I can do is ask you to imagine what the consequences would have been,” Dr. Nyerere said. Dr. Nyerere told the conference—now working against the clock to complete its