Bleak outlook for envoy

Press, 7 August 1978, Page 8

Bleak outlook for envoy

NZPA Windhoek (Namibia)

A United Nations special representative, Martti Ahtisaari, has started out on a mission that Western diplomats predict will plunge him from crisis to crisis as he seeks to formulate a peaceful transition to independence in Namibia (SouthWest Africa). The challenge was expected to become dramatically evident from the moment he stepped off his plane.

The two main political foes in Namibia, the black miliant South-West Africa People’s Organisation and the South African-backed Democratic Turnhalle Alliance planned to mass as many as 10,000 demonstrators at the airport to stake their rival claims to Mr Ahtisaari’s attention.

Despite the hurdles on his path, independence is already in the air in this small territorial capital. In anticipation of independence, the South African administrator-general (Mr Marthinus Steyn) has al-

ready dismantled many apartheid laws over the last year, and long-time residents say urban blacks have shed much of the deference to whites bred over decades of enforced segregation. There are other signs of impending majority rule: at Windhoek’s only discotheque, young South African soliders on leave from border duty happily dance with local black girls.

At least two Western powers, the United States and Britian, have had highlevel diplomats in the country in recent weeks scouting for housing for potential liaison missions. Both left before Mr Ahtisaari’s arrival to avoid giving the impression they were watching over him. But seasoned observers, officials. and diplomats asree that the 41-year-old Mr Ahisaari, a Finn, faces the challenge of his diplomatic career as he tries to prepare a comprehensive plan to bring independence to a territory torn by years of racial war, rich in minerals coveted by both East and West, and ruled for 58 years

by a white-minority South African Government highly apprehensive of turning power over to a hostile black government.

Mr Ahtisaari’s first task will be to forge a working arrangement with Mr Steyn, a South African regarded as pragmatic but still bound by the Pretoria Government. Mr Ahtisaari has also said he intends to pursue a cease-fire in his three-week fact-finding trip, but both S.W.A.P.O. and South Africa have threatened escalated war along the northern border with Angola until a final transition plan is sealed and signed. The common language among Namibia’s whites and blacks is Afrikaans, the D u t c h-derived language unique to South Africa, and most rural blacks are said to be suspicious of foreigners unfamiliar with their highly ritualised greetings and introductions. Mr Ahtisaari will have to deal with a black population of which the majority is still deeply bound by tribal affiliations and has little formal education.