Australian Wheat For Rhodesia

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32251, 20 March 1970, Page 15

Australian Wheat For Rhodesia

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright)

LONDON, March 19.

The “Financial Times” today carries a front page story saying that Australia has been supplying w’heat to Rhodesia; for some time.

The report says that the British Government knows of the trade and accepts it because shipments are being made on “humanitarian grounds." This is said to enable Australia to avoid the comprehensive mandatory sanctions imposed through the United Nations in May, 1968. The “Financial Times” report was written before today’s Security Council edict on sanctions on the whitemajority regime in Rhodesia. The newspaper says that the first reaction at Australia House in London was to suggest that perhaps wheat did not come under the United Nations embargo. “We subscribe to the full embargo,” a spokesman said.

But a British Foreign Office spokesman pointed out that only news media, education materials and certain medical supplies were exempt. Rhodesia was, anyway, an exporter of grains, and had supplied maize to South Africa.

The Australian House reply was to cite a United Nations resolution of May 29. 1968, which, said the Australian spokesman, exempted goods supplied on humanitarian grounds. “We regard wheat, a foodstuff, as humanitarian.” the spokesman declared.

An N.Z:P.A.-Reuter report said from New York that Rhodesia today faced further isolations from the world community after a United Nations Security Council order that all relations with the whiteminority regime be severed. Some 16 days after the declaration of a republic by rebel Rhodesia, a deeplydivided Security Council last night finally reached agreement on a compromise Finnish resolution cutting off almost all links with the Salisbury Government. With only Spain abstaining, the 15-nation body ordered United Nations members immediately to sever all diplomatic, consular, trade, mili-

tary and other relations with Salisbury and to interrupt transportation to and from Rhodesia. However, an earlier AfroAsian request that the ban include postal, radio and telegraphic contacts was not ac-

cepted, and Britain and the United States also insisted on assurances that medical and humanitarian cases were not included. The relatively modest results of the latest United Nations debate on Rhodesia were in sharp contrast to the tense and dramatic atmosphere pre-

vailing at several of the sessions.

On Tuesday, the United States and Britain cast vetoes —the first by the United States since the United Nations was founded 25 years ago and only the fourth by Britain—to defeat an AfroAsian resolution calling for the condemnation of Britain for not using force to overthrow the Smith regime.