U.S. Closing Its Mission in Namibia : View Seems Gloomy on Chances of S. Africa Pullout Soon

The United States is closing the diplomatic and military mission it established in Namibia last year to monitor the withdrawal of South African troops from neighboring Angola and to follow the transition of the vast territory to independence.

The move, disclosed Saturday by Assistant Secretary of State Chester A. Crocker, suggested to diplomats here that Washington sees little prospect for the completion soon of the promised South African withdrawal from southern Angola and even less of a chance for early Namibian independence.

Still, Crocker, here for extensive talks with South African officials in a bid to regain lost U.S. diplomatic momentum in the region, expressed his own optimism that peace would come eventually to southern Africa and reaffirmed the U.S. desire to play a role in shaping it.

Nonetheless, there is a far greater feeling of stalemate in the American-mediated negotiations between South Africa and Angola than there was three months ago during Crocker’s last trip, when he suggested that a breakthrough was close--even on the difficult issue of the withdrawal of as many as 30,000 Cuban troops stationed in Angola.

SWAPO Must Stop

South African Foreign Minister Roelof F. (Pik) Botha reiterated that his country would pull its last troops out of Angola--a move, in effect, toward granting Namibia (South-West Africa) independence--only after the South-West Africa People’s Organization, known as SWAPO, stops trying to infiltrate its guerrillas into the territory from Angola.

“We cannot continue our withdrawal while SWAPO continues to kill people in South-West Africa,” Botha declared, explaining his government’s reluctance to pull its troops back the final 25 miles to the Angolan-Namibian border.

However, Botha said that South Africa had recently received, perhaps from Angola through the United States, “some substantial indications that SWAPO will not continue its present southward thrust,” a seasonal offensive by several hundred Angola-based guerrillas into Namibia, which South Africa administers under a long-expired international mandate.

If the offensive were truly halted, Botha said, South Africa would consider resuming its withdrawal, which was supposed to have been completed last March. That might, in turn, revive broader peace negotiations in the region.

Expressing the U.S. hope that the South African withdrawal would, in fact, be completed soon, Crocker said Saturday that the American-brokered agreement between Angola and South Africa should be seen for its achievements--a substantial South African pullback from Angola, a yearlong cease-fire and a joint commission policing both and bringing the two countries closer together.

However, the surprise closing of the U.S. liaison office in Windhoek, the Namibian territorial capital, indicated to Western diplomats here that South Africa is unlikely to complete the withdrawal in the foreseeable future--because then, the Americans would presumably have stayed to monitor it and to share the credit. The diplomats also believe that negotiations for Namibian independence are so bogged down over the Cuban issue that the United States is unwilling to lend its prestige to the talks any longer by keeping its small five-man mission in Windhoek.

When the U.N. General Assembly in December called upon the United States to close the liaison office, Washington strongly defended it as contributing to the peace process in southern Africa.

Opened a year ago, the mission has been staffed by senior Africa specialists from the State Department, U.S. Army officers on temporary duty, military observers and a few administrative personnel. By then, the United States had taken the lead role among a five-nation Western contact group on Namibia’s future--including also Britain, France, West Germany and Canada.

Last April, the mission head and an Army officer were killed when a bomb exploded at a gasoline station where they were getting fuel near the Angolan border.

The two days of talks here between Crocker and Botha focused largely on the Angolan and Namibian questions, and the South African foreign minister said they had “extensively canvassed, discussed and analyzed” many proposals, including new suggestions from Angola, that might restore momentum to the peace negotiations.

No conclusion was reached, Botha said, and the talks will continue Monday and Tuesday in Cape Town.

On Friday, Botha met here with a Mozambique delegation headed by Col. Sergio Vieira, the security minister, to discuss charges that South Africa, despite an agreement signed last March, is still supporting anti-Marxist rebels of the Mozambique National Resistance.