Angola Retakes Town From Rebels : South Africa Warns It Won’t Permit Defeat of Guerrillas

Angolan government forces recaptured an important town from rightist guerrilla forces Friday and drew a warning from neighboring South Africa.

The Angolan forces retook Cazombo from the guerrillas of UNITA, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, and reportedly advanced toward the guerrillas’ headquarters at Jamba in southeastern Angola.

South Africa, which has long provided support for the UNITA guerrillas, said it is prepared to increase its support and will not permit the guerrillas to suffer serious losses.

Gen. Magnus Malan, the South African defense minister, acknowledged for the first time his government’s “material, human and moral” support for UNITA and Jonas Savimbi, its leader, and made it clear that this commitment would be strengthened.

‘Marxist Expansionism’

“As far as Angola is concerned, we have reached a watershed,” Malan told reporters in Pretoria. “Through our connections with UNITA, we maintain the interests of the Free World on our subcontinent. Supporting UNITA in Angola concerns stopping foreign intervention by Cubans and other Communist soldiers. It concerns stopping Marxist infiltration and expansionism. We will break our links with UNITA only on the condition that all foreign forces are withdrawn from Angola.”

Malan’s statement suggested that South Africa is concerned on two counts--the current Angolan government offensive against UNITA forces and the stalemated negotiations over the future of neighboring Namibia (South-West Africa), which is governed by South Africa. The withdrawal of 30,000 Cuban troops from Angola is a South African prerequisite for Namibian independence.

On both counts, Malan appeared to have taken a harder position.

“The West will now also have to state clearly where they stand on Cubans and other meddlers,” he said, referring to American efforts to negotiate a compromise on the issue.

‘Not Ashamed of This’

Of the years of clandestine aid to UNITA, Malan said, “I am not ashamed of this,” adding that “this connection is justifiable. . . . South Africa reserves its right to protect its own security interests.”

He did not disclose any further details of South Africa’s five-day-old thrust into southern Angola. Pretoria has said that about 500 South African soldiers have been pursuing Namibian guerrillas of SWAPO, the South-West Africa People’s Organization, to prevent new attacks on northern Namibia.

South Africa has announced that its troops all will be out of Angola by Sunday evening, but has provided little information on the operation.

South Africa administers Namibia in defiance of U.N. resolutions calling for independence for the former German colony.

The retaking of Cazombo, close to the Zaire and Zambian borders in eastern Angola and about 475 miles north of the Namibian frontier, was announced by Angola’s defense minister in Luanda. He said the victory came after nearly two months of aerial bombardment and a final ground attack.

UNITA said in a statement issued in Lisbon that its men could no longer hold the town and had withdrawn.

Important Crossroads

Cazombo reportedly was a major objective of the Angolan offensive. It is located at an important crossroads for supplies coming south from Zaire for the guerrillas and served as a staging point for attacks on the country’s main east-west railway. Its loss to UNITA two years ago was a major embarrassment for the government.

The Defense Ministry in Luanda said that a South African army officer was killed at Cazombo. Pretoria had no comment on this, although it had announced earlier in the week that a medical corpsman was killed while serving with UNITA at an undisclosed location.

President Pieter W. Botha, speaking Friday at a National Party conference in Pretoria, defended Malan and Foreign Minister Roelof F. (Pik) Botha, both of whom were sharply criticized here after disclosures that South Africa has been secretly supporting right-wing guerrillas in Mozambique, another black-ruled, Marxist neighbor country, after signing a nonaggression treaty in 1984 agreeing to halt such assistance.

“I stand by my ministers,” Botha said. “I will not ask the ministers to resign.”

He also defended military commanders against charges that they had undermined the agreement with Mozambique by supporting the right-wing Mozambique National Resistance against the government of President Samora M. Machel in Maputo.