Amin doubts

Press, 31 May 1977, Page 8

Amin doubts

NZPA-Reuter Nairobi Uganda Radio has for the first time left a question mark hanging over Ugandan participation in the Commonwealth conference in London next month. The radio, monitored in Nairobi, quoted a military spokesman as saying “Owing to the apparent rift between Uganda and Britain over Ugandan participation in the forthcoming Commonwealth conference, the Ugandan Government is studying the development to its conclusion with extreme interest. “The Ugandan Government will make her position on the matter clear by June 8, 1977, at the latest.” Observers said that it was the first time that the radio had not expressed Ugandan determination to attend the conference, which opens on June 8. After reports of widespread killings in Uganda, most of them from hundreds of refugees who have fled to

Kenya and other countries | neighbouring Uganda, Brit-i ain has been under pressure I to keep the Ugandan President (Field-Marshal Idi Amin) away from the conference. Radio Uganda also indicated that some change was being considered in Ugandan purchases of whisky, ciga-

rettes, clothing, and luxury goods which are flown each week in Ugandan aircraft from Stanstead Airport, north of London, to Entebbe Airport, south of Kampala. In London, the “Financial Times” has said that the British Government has gone about ensuring the exclusion of the Ugandan President from the conference in the most extraordinary way. In an editorial, the newspaper commented: “Several possible excuses have been advanced for the British approach . . . one is based on the question of precedent. “It is said that if a country is excluded from a Commonwealth conference now, others — on more dubious grounds — might be excluded in future. “The last excuse is the feeblest of all. It is an excuse for dodging the issue. “Questions about future Commonwealth conferences are hypothetical. They can be dealt with as and when they arise.

; “The case for President ■lAmin’s exclusion from this i year's conference has been made clear all along. It is improbable that he never seriously expected to be here, but even he could scarcely have calculated the contortions to which the British i Government has been reduced.”