Reagan Reportedly Picks Black Envoy for S. Africa : Todman, 60, a Career Diplomat

The Administration has decided to name Terence Todman, a black career Foreign Service officer, to be the next U.S. ambassador to South Africa, Administration sources said today.

A senior Administration official told a group of reporters that naming a black envoy “does have the potential to make it abundantly clear in a very tangible way what kind of a society we are.”

The official said President Reagan and Secretary of State George P. Shultz “want to move on this very soon.”

Officials said the Administration decided to select a career officer to avoid a controversy similar to the one that followed the tentative choice of Robert Brown, a black North Carolina businessman. Brown withdrew his name Monday when it became clear that his confirmation hearings would be clouded by examination of his past business dealings.

Highest-Ranking Black

Todman is the highest-ranking black in the Foreign Service.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) told Reagan on Monday that the Administration’s candidate “should be some one of the caliber of Terence Todman.”

Todman has been called back from his post as U.S. ambassador to Denmark and has been at the State Department this week on “consultations.”

Todman, 60, was born in the Virgin Islands and joined the Foreign Service in 1952. He has served as U.S. ambassador to Chad, Guinea, Costa Rica, Spain and Denmark, and was assistant secretary of state for Latin America during the Carter Administration. He was removed from the latter post in a policy dispute with human rights activists in the Carter Administration who felt that Todman was not tough enough on right-wing dictators in the Western Hemisphere.

4 1/2 Years for Current Envoy

The current ambassador to Pretoria, Herman Nickel, has been in the post 4 1/2 years, and Administration officials have said it is time for him to relinquish the job.

Faced with growing criticism of its South Africa policy, the Administration indicated today that it is searching for some unified action that the United States and its European allies could take to express displeasure with the white-minority Pretoria government without imposing new economic sanctions.

One step under consideration is a move to freeze out white South African officials by denying them visas to travel to the United States or Western Europe.

Talks in London Set

Presidential spokesman Larry Speakes announced that Assistant Secretary of State Chester A. Crocker, the Administration’s top African affairs specialist, will travel to London next week to discuss possible joint actions with leaders of the European Community.

“Unilateral steps would pale in relation to what we could do in concert with our allies, and that’s what we intend to do,” Speakes said, making clear that Reagan’s address on South Africa on Tuesday was not the Administration’s final word on the issue.

Speakes today discouraged speculation that the Administration was considering denying landing rights to South African airliners as one form of “non-punitive” sanctions.

Decision-Makers Targeted

“We want to target the sanctions against those who are in the decision-making process,” Speakes said. “The things that we would be discussing would be along the line of . . . visas and travel to the U.S., consular operations, things along that line.”

One official familiar with Administration thinking said the arbitrary nature of a government’s decision to grant an individual a visa would make it possible to exclude white South African leaders and defenders of the apartheid system of racial segregation without harming South Africa’s blacks.