Waldheim taken to task

Press, 29 May 1981, Page 8

Waldheim taken to task

NZPA-Reuter New York South Africa yesterday attacked the United Nations Secretary-General (Dr Kurt Waldheim) for his recent speech to a Paris conference on sanctions against South Africa and said the world body was “fast becoming a menace.”' In a letter to Dr Waldheim, the South African

Foreign Minister (Mr Roelof “Pik” Botha) said participants at the conference, which ended yesterday, used the meeting to “vent their spleen on South Africa,” United Nations sources said. . “Your Excellency’s' statement was regrettably no exception,” the letter said. The week-long conference, sponsored by. the. United Na-, tions and the Organisation of African Unity, ended, with a call by more than 120 United Nations members for sweep-

ing sanctions against South Africa because of its racial policies and failure to. grant independence to South-West Africa. “Your Excellency's statement as a whole does not convince those endeavouring earnestly to find solutions to the intricate problems. of southern Africa that you are prepared to approach tlie problems of southern Africa in a calm, sober and realistic manner,” Mr Botha’s letter said. “Consequently you are contributing to the growing body of opinion in southern Africa that the United Nations has not only become redundant as far as the future of our region is concerned but is fast becoming a menace and a burden to those dedicated to the goal of peaceful negotiation and constructive development.”

According to the United Nations sources Mr Botha said South Africa “will not take sanctions lying down.” The Paris conference was told that the industrialised West must choose between trade with South Africa and trade with the rest of the African continent. .

“The time is soon approaching that countries who trade with South Africa must make a decision,” said the Tanzanian Foreign Minister (Mr Salim Salim), the conference chairman. “You cannot be a friend of the apartheid system and expect to do business as usual with other African countries.” , In an interview with a Soviet magazine President Kenneth Kaunda, of Zambia, said that lives will be lost and capitalist property threatened in a revolutionary

war in southern Africa if the West does not bring about political change there. He told the Soviet weekly “Modern Times” that the United Nations should call a new conference similar to one in Geneva in January and try to guarantee its success, and that the contact group of five Western states on Soiith-West Africa should pressure South* Africa to respect United Nations decisions.

“I sincerely believe that attempts to convene a new conference would meet with success. If. not, the whole region will be drawn into a bloody war. It will not be possible to avoid it, at least it will not be possible to stop S.W.A.P.O.’s (South-West Africa People’s Organisation) struggle for the 'legitimate rights of the Namibian people to independence.”