Rhodesia Renews Emergency

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32322, 13 June 1970, Page 11

Rhodesia Renews Emergency

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

SALISBURY, June 12.

The Rhodesian Justice Minister (Mr Desmond Lardener-Burke) said in Parliament in Rhodesia yesterday that the Organisation of African Unity was devoting increased attention to guerrilla infiltration of southern Africa.

Speaking before Parliament renewed the country’s four-and-a-half year old State of Emergency for another year, he said that the O.A.U. no longer had * the Biafran conflict to worry about. “Additional .funds are being made available to the terrorist organisations and efforts have been made by African leaders, particularly in Zambia, to. heal the breach which- had appeared in the leadership of a particular terrorist organisation,” he said.

Mr Lardner-Burke added: “The O.A.U. will therefore expect to see some concrete results flowing from the large amount of money which is being fed to these organisations, and it would be fool-

hardy of us not to expect further infiltrations in the future.”

The Minister said that he knew that numbers of trained men were still available to organisations in the north and that despite their continuing set-backs the guerrillas still presented an offensive capability.

“There can be no doubt that they are now concentrating on improving the quality of the men available rather than the quantity,” he said.

Emergency regulations would be required “until such time as Zambia ceases to harbour terrorists and to permit them freedom of movement to our common border,” Mr Lardner-Burke said.