Help for white Rhodesians

Press, 15 September 1976, Page 20

Help for white Rhodesians

Nearly a week has passed since the Prime Minister first said that he had not heard of any approach to New Zealand to join an international plan to resettle white refugees from Rhodesia Two days ago Mr Muldoon repeated that he still had no information about the plan. The Government should be attempting to find out, with the utmost urgency, what part, if any. New Zealand would have in a complicated and expensive international agreement.

Mr Muldoon has said that New Zealand is prepared to take an unspecified number of refugees, if it is asked to do so. He added that, if New Zealand were asked to subscribe to a fund, the request would have to be considered formally by the Government However delicate the negotiations which the American Secretary of State (Dr Kissinger) has under way in southern Xfrica. New Zealand has a right to know how far it may be committed by talks in which it has no part.

The Kissinger proposals being tested round African capitals this week are said to entail up to S2OOO million in compensation payments for white Rhodesians who choose to leave their country rather than live under a black government. It would include incentives for the whites to remain and inducements for those who provide important technical skills to stay at their posts, at

least until black Rhodesians have been trained to take their places. The United States, Britain, France, West Germany, Canada, and Australia, as well as New Zealand, are understood to have been asked to contribute to the fund.

But the plan remains something of an academic exercise so long as the Rhodesian Government refuses to consider seriously a transfer of power within two years, as Dr Kissinger has proposed. Indeed, it remains unclear whether a responsible and secure black Rhodesian government could be found in that time, and whether white Rhodesians would accept being displaced, even if their Government finally accepts Dr Kissinger’s proposals. The proposals may well be worthy of some support from New Zealand if they combine a just settlement with an end to violence in Rhodesia. But New Zealanders can hardly decide on the merits of the scheme if they do not know what may be asked of them. It may be that other groups or States will also want to be associated with the proposals. The World Council of Churches and some church groups in New Zealand have claimed to be particularly eager to achieve a settlement of southern Africa’s difficulties. They should not be denied the opportunity now to contribute to the needs of Rhodesia’s refugees-in-the-making if the plan will serve the same ends for which these groups have been working.