U.N. sidelined by bloody fighting

Press, 5 April 1989, Page 10

U.N. sidelined by bloody fighting

NZPA-Reuter Windhoek South Africa is pitting its military might against S.W.A.P.O. guerrillas in one of the bloodiest episodes of Namibia’s 23-year bush war — as United Nations peacekeepers watch on the sidelines.

More than 120 guerrillas of the South West Africa People’s Organisation have been killed since the fighting erupted on Saturday, when Namibia was meant to start on the road to democracy and independence from South Africa. About 20 members of the colonial police force, now assisted by South African troops, have also been killed in the fighting, which extends along a 300 km front near the Angolan border.

S.W.A.P.O. officials and Namibian police have reported clashes across northern Namibia since the fighting started on the first day of the desert territory’s U.N.-

supervised transition to independence. South Africa says heavilyarmed S.W.A.P.O. guerrillas crossed into Namibia from Angola and attacked South African forces.

S.W.A.P.O. says its forces inside Namibia were attacked by South African-led security forces and had to defend themselves. The United States said on Monday the guerrillas took advantage of a new ceasefire in Namibia by mounting a major cross-border action. The Bush Administration pledged to back U.N. efforts to speed deployment of peacekeeping forces to the area. At U.N. headquarters in New York, South Africa urged a firm stand in response to what it called a clear violation by S.W.A.P.O. units of accords on Namibian independence signed last December. The U.N. Secretary-General, Javier Perez de Cuellar, called

crisis talks with council members, including an hour-long discussion with the Soviet Ambassador, Aleksandr Belonogov, the council president for April, and planned to report to the council on the results of a U.N. inquiry into the fighting. Namibia’s top colonial official, Administrator General Louis Pienaar, called for calm and for the peace operation to be given a chance to function.

“I wish to give my full assurance that the situation is under full control,” General Pienaar said in a statement. Diplomats and officials in Windhoek, Namibia’s capital, said the next few days were likely to make or break the apparent S.W.A.P.O. incursion, one of the biggest since it started a bush war against Pretoria’s rule in 1966.

“Either they dig in for a long stalemate or the whole thing fizzles out. But it cannot go on

like this, the loss of life is too great,” one official said. S.W.A.P.O. rejected South Africa’s allegations that it had started the fighting, saying that its guerrillas had been trapped by South African troops going on a killing spree before leaving the territory for the last time. “S.W.A.P.O. forces fired only in self-defence after being hunted down and attacked,” the organisation said in a statement released in Luanda. The U.N. peace-keeping force in Namibia, one of the biggest ever mounted, has agreed to a restricted redeployment of South African forces because of the guerrilla fighting. A U.N. spokesman said peacekeepers were at the battlefront, monitoring the actions of the South Africans.

At the border, fierce fighting raged at several contact points, a police spokesman said.