'Oil Ban Circumvented'

Press, Issue 30997, 1 March 1966, Page 17

'Oil Ban Circumvented '

f.V.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) LONDON, Feb. 28. Britain's oil blockade of Rhodesia virtually no longer existed, the “Sunday Times reported yesterday from Johannesburg. By last Thursday more than 40,000 gallons of fuel a day were crossing the border from South Africa at Beit bridge, the newspaper said. While the South Africanbased oil companies and the South African Government still maintained strict silence on the situation, reports from the border indicated that the fuel lift was becoming bigger and more organised. SA. Attitude South Africa was still doing nothing officially either to encourage or discourage a boycott of Rhodesia. In practical terms this meant that anyone who wished could buy petrol in South Africa and send it across the border. Last week-end the flow dropped because of a reported decision by oil companies to restrict sales because of possible repercussions. Since then they had overcome their nervousness

and gone ahead. Rhodesia needed 70,000 to 83,000 gallons of fuel a day to keep going at the present rationing level. The newspaper reported from Rhodesia that Mr Smith was winning the sanctions

battle. Commerce was still thriving though a few small businessmen had gone to the wall and there had been some dismissals by factories unable to obtain raw materials or find export markets.

Unemployment was much lower than had been anticipated, the “Sunday Times” said.

Breakfast cereals were the first commodity to disappear from the shops. But Rhodesia was still very far from the stage which the former Agriculture Minister, Lord Graham, forecast might be reached when the entire population would be limited to a diet of maize-meal.

Shortages, particularly in the edible line, were of luxury items and constituted no-

thing more than minor irritants. There was every reason to believe the oil embargo had been circumvented. The newspaper’s correspondent said he had heard one fairly circumstantial story to the effect that Britain herself took 9000 tons of Rhodesian chrome after the imposition of the ban on its import, much to the annoyance of the United States which was forced, for lack of other sources of supply, to turn to its own stockpile of inferior-grade ore. The only effective weapon left Mr Wilson was a total clamp-down of Rhodesian trade with Zambia, a step which would prove costly to Britain but seemed inevitable.