Get your own Free Home Page WASHINGTON--Peace in the Middle East may be closer, says Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres. Although Jordan's King Hussein and the PLO's Yasser Arafat failed to agree on a joint delegation to negotiate with Israel, Peres said: "The channels opened provide a foundation for developments."
(text of article from December 27, 1986 Vancouver Sun)
The following story was written under South Africa's emergency regulations, which impose severe reporting restrictions and censorship.
BY ALAN COWELL
New York Times Service
CAPE TOWN
Archbishop Desmond Tutu is urging the Reagan Administration to institute a new policy toward South Africa, offering Pretoria a choice between extensive financial and diplomatic support for dismantling apartheid, or greatly increased ostracism.
Such a strategy, Archbishop Tutu said, would entail a decision by Washington to stop vetoing mandatory United Nations sanctions and to sever all telecommunications with South Africa if the country's white rulers refuse to accept a timetable for change.
His proposal, he indicated, would include possible U.S. backing for white minority rights in a postapartheid South Africa.
Archbishop Tutu, winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize and one of the country's best-known anti-apartheid campaigners, made his remarks in an interview at his official residence here.
He said that he had made known his proposal in public speeches during a visit to the United States last week, but that his call yesterday was the first to be made in South Africa, where advocacy of punitive economic measures is an offence under emergency regulations promulgated on June 12.
Since that date an estimated 22,000 people have been detained without charge for varying periods. The emergency decree is the second since the outbreak of the current wave of protest and violence in September, 1984. Since then abut 2,300 people, most of them black, have been killed in the continuing unrest.
Archbishop Tutu said the present U.S. policy toward South Africa, known as "constructive engagement," has produced few tangible results. Those results, he said, "was so little owed to so great a power."
The constructive engagement policy is based on the idea that quiet persuasion offers more leverage on Pretoria than public confrontation.
"I can say that the South African Government has been aware that it could get away with a lot because it knew it would be protected from the consequences of its actions by Britain, West Germany and the United States," he said.
By comparison, he said, the more confrontational approach of the Carter administration had also yielded little. "Then you would have to say the South African Government is persuaded neither by constructive engagement or forceful talking," he said, prompting the question: "What influence is left?"
"The American Government can still say: 'Here's a timetable, an agenda, for the dismantling of apartheid and, if you are willing to adopt it, we pledge that we will stand by you and try to give you as many guarantees as possible for the minorities in South Africa and also the capital to enable you to build up the infrastructure that you neglected so much."
Should Pretoria refuse the offer, Archbishop Tutu said, then Washington's message should be: "'You are on your own. We will no longer stand in the way of mandatory sanctions if these were to come up for approval by the Security Council. And for such-and-such a period, we are cutting off all telecommunications with you.'"
He said such sanctions would "bring things very quickly to the notice of the white community.
"If you were to cut off Telex, telephone, telegram, cable services, and, possibly, going on to say: 'We don't allow any of you people to travel to our country--that would be very severe."
Archbishop Tutu said further punitive measures should include the denial of South African access to capital markets, as he and other leading , anti-apartheid clergymen had sought in February. "If they had done that in February, we would probably have been talking about a different situation now."
While some economic sanctions have been imposed by the United States, as a result of congressional action opposed by the Administration, and by the British Commonwealth and the European Community, they have fallen short of an attempt at total economic isolation.
The archbishop expressed continued disappointment with leading Western powers--notably Britain, West Germany and the United States--saying they seemed to believe that "stability and Western civilized standards" would be better protected by a white minority government "even if that regime was being somewhat nasty to the natives."
(article from December 27, 1986 Globe and Mail; also contained photograph of Archbishop Desmond Tutu)
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