Last Leaving Aden

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31540, 30 November 1967, Page 15

Last Leaving Aden

ADEN, Nov. 29.

All is now ready for the final airlift of British troops from Aden which will today bring to an end Britain’s 128-year presence in South Arabia, a few hours before it becomes a new independent republic.

About 2000 men who still remained in Aden are now concentrated inside the Khormaksar Air Base, from which they are being flown home. The last British soldier is expected to leave by noon today and at midnight the People’s Republic of Southern Yemen will be formally proclaimed. Britain will hand over to the National Liberation Front authority over about 1,500,000 Arabs who inhabit the hot, almost barren, and mountainous territories of South Arabia.

The last British troops to leave, the 42 Marine commando and “C” Company of the King’s Own Royal Border Regiment, will be flown by helicopter to the Marine commando ship Albion lying offshore.

South Arabian independence follows a bloody period in Aden’s history with 398 people killed and 1814 •pounded since emergency regulations were enforced on December 10, 1963. About two-thirds of the casualties were Arabs.

British troops lost 57 killed and 669 wounded.

In addition 76 British soldiers were killed and 235 wounded in fighting elsewhere in South Arabia. Arab casualties in this fighting are not known. But the last few days have passed virtually without incident as delirious crowds of Adenis celebrated each successive British withdrawal from sectors of the city. These have now been

turned over to the 8500-strong South Arabian Army.

The N.L.F.—the former terrorist organisation which gained control of most of South Arabia from the defunct Federal Government and from a rival nationalist organisation, F.L.O.S.Y. (the Front for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen) —has taken over the local civil administration until the first government of this new Arab State is formed. The N.L.F. is pledged to a policy of socialism at home and non-alignment abroad, according to its national charter adopted in 1965. Other goals are unity of Arab peoples and their homeland, liberation of Palestine, support of nationalist revolutionary movements, and “reunification of the Arab people in North and South Yemen

... on popular and sound bases.”

The charter calls for development of publicly-owned and privately-owned industry, commerce, and agriculture as well as free education and the restoration to women of their “natural rights and privileges.” The British High Commissioner, Sir Humphrey Trevelyan, left Aden on Monday for good after a Marine band had played him out with “Things Ain’t What They Used To Be” and “Puppet On a String.”

“The British Government has now carried out its promise to give South Arabia independence by 1968. I wish a happy, peaceful and prosperous future for the country,” Sir Humphrey Trevelyan told a press conference. “We look forward to long and good relations between the United Kingdom and South Arabia.”

In Geneva yesterday, the leader of the National Liberation Front said that the territory had won independence “through blood and sacrifice," not as a gift from Britain. The leader, Mr Qahtan Mohammed Al-Shaabi told a press conference that the new republic wished to establish friendly and cordial relations with other countries.

During talks, the N.L.F. leaders have pressed for more than the £6O million aid which Britain last June promised the now-defunct South Arabian Federal Government for the first three years of independence.

Mr Al-Shaabi said that on this point the N.L.F. was not begging but “only asking for compensation for the long period Britain exploited us.”

Asked by a reporter whether the new Government would block Israeli shipping at the mouth of the Red Sea, the N.L.F. leader asked the questioner to identify himself. When the reporter said he represented the Israeli Broadcasting Service, Mr Al-Shaabi paused for a moment and then said angrily: “The enemy of our Arabs is our enemy and Palestine is part of Arab territory.” Mr Al-Shaabi told the press conference: “We are not advocates of war and violence but were compelled to resort to violence after the British refused to leave our country by peaceful means.”