Recklessness on Angola

President Reagan’s decision to receive Jonas Savimbi, the Angola guerrilla leader, is a reckless concession to the radical right in the United States.

It is a mistake in terms of Southern African policy, in that it aligns the United States with South Africa itself--the only other nation that has given aid and recognition to Savimbi’s UNITA forces.

It is a mistake in terms of East-West policy, in that it converts a peripheral conflict into an open confrontation on the mistaken assumption that the action will demonstrate American determination to Moscow. There are better ways to talk to General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

And it is a mistake in terms of economic policy, for the Administration is now extending its efforts to isolate Angola in diplomatic terms to a new effort to force the withdrawal of American businesses operating in Angola. Those operations, notably Chevron’s oil production, should be encouraged, not discouraged. They serve to guarantee the flow of the rich resources to the non-communist world, increasing the independence of the West from Persian Gulf supplies while bringing some hope for development to a miserable, impoverished land.

Rarely has the government of the United States given a foreign opposition figure honors and courtesies equal to those accorded Savimbi these past two days. He was received not only by the Chief Executive in the White House but also by the secretaries of state and defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was hailed as a hero. In fact, he is an opportunist who started his role in resistance as a radical Marxist, tore apart the original resistance movement along tribal lines that elevated his status, and subsequently has worked hand in glove with South Africa, his benefactor and defender.

To hear Savimbi praised as a peacemaker is ludicrous against the background of the carefully orchestrated military operations that his UNITA guerrillas and the troops of South Africa have carried out against Angola. Among South Africa’s more sensational ventures was an effort, fortunately unsuccessful, to sabotage the Chevron operations in Cabinda. Now we hear Bernard Kalb, the State Department spokesman, breaking new frontiers of double-speak to inform the world that it is Chevron that “supports the war rather than the search for peace.” What extraordinary nonsense.

It is also alarming to hear the preaching in Washington about the dangerous role of the Cubans in Angola as if they posed a regional threat. There is no surer way to guarantee their continued presence than to accept Reagan’s new commitment “to be very helpful to what Dr. Savimbi and his people are trying to do.” The threat to security in the region stems from South Africa, with 106,000 in the regular armed forces, not the 30,000 Cubans on duty in Angola. The guerrilla war in Angola that Pretoria sponsors, and reinforces with its far-ranging troops, has disrupted the economy of the entire region, not just Angola.

Now Reagan is joining forces in waging that war, a war that serves one cause above all others--the cause of South Africa, reinforcing South Africa’a colonial control of Namibia and disrupting any political developments in the region that might encourage justice for the black majority in South Africa itself.

If the President is truly committed to self-determination in Angola, to the withdrawal of the Cuban forces there, to the independence of Namibia and to the end of apartheid in South Africa, he should be receiving the leaders of Angola and Namibia in the White House--not a renegade who disrupts the process of peace and true independence.