Delegates hail Maputo talks

Press, 24 May 1977, Page 8

Delegates hail Maputo talks

NZPA-Reuter Maputo African and Western delegates believe that the United Nations conference on Southern Africa in Maputo, Mozambique, was unexpectedly successful. The conference ended at the week-end with Western countries dissociating themselves from part of a final declaration containing sweeping proposals designed to isolate white-minority governments and force them to accept majority rule in Rhodesia and Namibia (South-West Africa). But the five Western members of the U.N. Security Council — the United States, Britain, Canada, France, and

West Germany — and the European Economic Community accepted most of the final documents and delegations from both sides regarded this as a surprisingly positive development. Western sources said that the main stumbling blocks were calls for a mandatory arms embargo against South Africa and a total communications embargo against Rhodesia. The Western nations had feared an extreme final conference document which they might have had to reject totally, but they were instead able to issue statements which Western sources said had deliberately been made as mild as possible.