UGANDAN MOVE U.K. Consul expelled

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33032, 27 September 1972, Page 15

UGANDAN MOVE U.K. Consul expelled

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, September 26. The Ugandan Government has ordered the British Consul in Kampala, Mr George Hawkins, out of the troubled east African country, the Foreign Office said last night.

The shock move is certain to strain relations between Uganda and Britain, already tense after the gaoling of Britons during fighting in Uganda last week and the expulsion of 50,000 Asians with British passports.

Mr Hawkins, a 51-year-old career diplomat who has been consul in Kampala for nearly a year, was the hero of last week’s ordeal by scores of Britons rounded up and gaoled by General Amin’s troops. He led a small team of officials from the British High Commission in the Uganda capital to hound Ugandan military and police to secure the release of the detained Britons from prisons, some likened to “the black hole of Calcutta.” -

Reports reaching London said that Mr Hawkins had been declared persona non grata, but the Foreign Office declined to confirm that. The spokesman, however, said that Mr Hawkins’s tenacious efforts to secure the Britons’ release “was obviously tied in” with his expulsion.

Informed diplomatic sources said that the British Government had played down Mr Hawkins’s expulsion to avoid rupturing relations with Uganda while 7000 Britons and thousands of Asians were still in the strife-torn country. Some said that there were fears in official circles that an explosion of publicity could “provoke Amin into more irrational acts.”

They said that General Amin had demanded that Mr Hawkins be withdrawn by the end of this week. London is expected to appoint a replacement for him. The British High Commission in Kampala has been in the eye of the Ugandan storm since General Amin last month branded the Asians “saboteurs” and “traitors” and ordered them out of the country by November 7.

Later, he accused the British, now saddled with a flood of homeless, penniless Asian refugees, of plotting to assassinate him. When Ugandan exiles thrust across the Tanzanian frontier last week General Amin said the British were backing them in a bid to depose him.

Britain has denied al! these charges, but relations between Britain and its former

colony have deteriorated critically.

British newspapers have vilified General Amin for his actions in ousting the Asians and gaoling British men, women, and children.