SOUTH AFRICA U.N. speculation about expulsion

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33675, 26 October 1974, Page 17

SOUTH AFRICA U.N. speculation about expulsion

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) NEW YORK, October 25. A draft resolution urging the immediate expulsion of South Africa from the United Nations has been circulated today as an official Security Council document.

I he draft, sponsored also by Mauritania and Cameroon the other two African members of the council of 15 nations — contains only one operative paragraph: “The council recommends to the General Assembly the immediate expulsion of South Africa from the United Nations in compliance with Article 6 of the Charter.”

That article says: “A United Nations member which has persistently violated the principles contained in the present Charter may be expelled from the organisation by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.” The resolution also includes 10 preambular paragraphs spelling out the background to the expulsion move, which was prompted by South Africa’s policy of apartheid. The republic’s continuing occupation of Namibia (South-West Africa) in defiance of repeated Um ted

Nations resolutions, and its support for Mr lan Smith’s Government in Rhodesia, in violation of mandatory United Nations sanctions, is also referred to. There has been widespread speculation that one or more of the three permanent Western members of the Security Council — the United States, Britain, and France — may use a veto, if necessary, to block South Africa’s expulsion, while agreeing to a less-drastic form of diplomatic pressure. Although the Security Council debate on relations with South Africa, held at the request of the General Assembly, enters its second week today all the speakers so far have been non-mem-bers of the Council.

Most have either called directly for South Africa's expulsion or strongly ' favoured such action, which is unprecedented in the United Nations 29-year hisI tory. The sole voice raised so far in South Africa’s defence 1 has been that of the repub- ; lie’s own United Nations ! Representative (Mr Roelof “Pik” Botha), who yesterday 1 delivered an hour-long ; address calling for “an end ' to sterile confrontation and recrimination” against his ’ country. : He said that South Africa : was the victim of a “a ven- ' detta being conducted by .cer--1 tain members of the United ’ Nations against my Govern- ' ment,” and said that hostile resolutions adopted by the world body were based on inadequate, prejudiced, and often grossly-distorted information.

A representative of the Pan Africanist Congress, Mr David Sibeka, who had earlier addressed the Council with a call for South Africa’s expulsion, said in a press statement yesterday: “By using seemingly conciliatory language, Botha (the representative of the white minority regime) betrayed that he was under instructions to deceive world opinion, and thus gain time for the South African racialist regime.”