Kissinger’s shuttle at crucial stage

Press, 18 September 1976, Page 6

Kissinger’s shuttle at crucial stage

NZPA-Reuter

Lusaka

Having consulted two key black Presidents, the United States Secretary of State (Dr Henry Kissinger) now faces the South African Prime Minister (Mr John Vorster) in an encounter that could make or break his peacemaking mission in southern Africa.

Dr Kissinger has flown from Zambia’s capital to Pretoria to confer with Mr Vorster on two main items: A Vorster account of his talks earlier this week with the Rhodesian Prime Minister (Mr lan Smith) on whether the Salisbury Government should surrender power to the black majority. A Kissinger account of his exchange with Presidents Kenneth Kaunda and Julius Nyerere on ways of setting up negotiations to settle the constiutional future of Rhodesia and Namibia (SouthWest Africa). Neither Mr Vorster nor Dr Kissinger is likely, in their initial exchange, to underplay the force with which their protagonists argued their respective cases. Dr Kissinger is being spurred on his mission to Pretoria for his third round of talks with Mr Vorster since last June by a warning from President Kaunda that his mission had only days in which to succeed.

“If your mission fails, we’ll fight,” Dr Kaunda told Dr Kissinger in an emotional appeal at their talks in the . Zambian State House. United States plans are for Dr Kissinger to return to Lusaka on Monday morning for about three hours before flying on to Dar-es-Salaam, j ' On Tuesday, he is ex-

pected to fly to Kinshasa, Zaire. The visit to Lusaka was a sentimental return, of sorts for Dr Kissinger, who brought President Kaunda to tears last April with a speech in which he pledged unrelenting United States opposition to white-minority rule in Rhodesia, Namibia, and South Africa itself.

Since that speech, President Kaunda and other African leaders have called for an increase in armed struggle inside Rhodesia. The United States view, as privately conveyed to reporters, is that the African leaders are maintaining public militancy to avoid the suspicion that they are somehow entering into deals with white racists. It is understood that if the African leaders had been as militant in private as they have been in public, Dr Kissinger would not have embarked on his trip of mediation.

Although African leaders have denounced Dr Kissiger’s meetings with Mr Vorster, President Nyerere and others appear to accept American arguments that such meetings are the price of a peacful settlement, even though they may increase the international stature of the South African Government.

Mr Smith has won the unanimous approval of his ruling Rhodesia Front Party to negotiate. Rhodesia’s fut■e with Dr Kissinger.