U.K. AGREES SANCTIONS WILL NOT TOPPLE SMITH

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31150, 29 August 1966, Page 11

U.K. AGREES SANCTIONS WILL NOT TOPPLE SMITH

(N.Z. Press Association —Copyright}

LONDON, August 28.

The British Government has for the first time conceded that world-wide sanctions will not by themselves end Rhodesia’s rebellion against British authority, says the Associated Press.

Senior diplomats, reporting this last night, said that the British and 22 other Commonwealth Governments have come to the conclusion that South Africa—Rhodesia’s neighbour to the south—was largely to blame for the failure of the sanctions authorised by the United Nations.

South African economic aid and fuel supplies had enabled the Rhodesian economy to survive the worldwide boycott, according to these Commonwealth authorities.

Recognising all this, the British have accepted a nearly unanimous Commonwealth view that other unspecified measures will be needed to topple the illegal regime of lan Smith which proclaimed Rhodesian independence last November in defiance of London.

The Commonwealth States were reported to be split over what new action should be taken to ensure ultimate African rule in Rhodesia, where the majority blacks are ruled by an all-white administration.

A majority, some sources said, wanted Britain to yield urgently, responsibility for Rhodesia’s immediate, future to, the United Nations. But Mr Wilson so far. has set his face against such a move hoping for a compromise settlement These hopes lately have been dimmed, says Associated Press. Current British and Com-

monwealth thinking on the Rhodesia crisis has been set forth in a secret report drawn up by a group of Commonwealth envoys in London. It has been prepared for the consideration of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ conference due to open in London on September 6. The conference promises to be stormy, with Rhodesia the most explosive topic. For months African and Asian tempers have run high at the Britain Government’s handling of the crisis. But in the last few days passions have been roused still more by the Smith regime’s move to assume still wider powers of arbitrary arrest.

Thus Mr Wilson, who will preside over the London meeting, seems bound to face insistent demands to turn Rhodesia over to the United Nations. He has taken no final stand on this beyond saying that Britain has no intention of yielding her responsibilities. But he has acknowledged that Britain has no way of stopping other countries from seeking United Nations intervention. Meanwhile fears have spread through Britain that such a development may be

near. Sir Alec Douglas-Home, the former Conservative Prime Minister, summed up his party’s attitude yesterday in public warning to Mr Wilson to resist any temptation to shift responsibility for Rhodesia to the United Nations or anyone else. “It must be handled by Britain and Rhodesia alone,” he told a political rally in Scotland.