Britain Forfeited Leadership of Commonwealth, Gandhi Says

India charged Tuesday that Britain has forfeited its historic leadership of the Commonwealth by refusing to impose harsh sanctions against South Africa agreed upon by the other countries at a seven-nation summit.

“It is not the Commonwealth that lost. It is Britain that lost,” Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi told a news conference. “Britain is not the leader any more in the Commonwealth . . . because it has compromised basic values and principles for economic ends.”

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher shrugged off the recriminations as the visiting leaders headed home after the two-day conference on South Africa which split the Commonwealth, the 49-member association of Britain and its former colonies.

‘Finished Up ... Friendly’

“The result is reasonable for all and we finished up as friendly as we started,” she said of the summit she attended with the leaders of Australia, Canada, India, the Bahamas and the African nations of Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The summit followed a Commonwealth deadline of mid-1986 for the South African government to ease its apartheid policy of racial segregation and start negotiations with black leaders.

Thatcher agreed to “voluntary” bans on new investment and promotion of South African tourism; the government has no laws to compel enforcement. And she said Britain would go along with the 12-nation European Communities if it imposes a ban on coal, iron and steel imports next month.

British officials said the limited embargoes conceded by Thatcher as a conciliatory gesture to the Commonwealth would affect 7.5% of the $1.5 billion of annual British-South African trade.

Thatcher balked at a far tougher list of measures adopted by the six other countries, including cutting air links, reducing diplomatic missions and banning agricultural imports. Gandhi said he is confident that most of the rest of the Commonwealth will also impose these measures.

“I simply will not do that,” Thatcher said, adding that British implementation of the full list would have cost the jobs of 200,000 black South Africans.

Sought to Move Thatcher

Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke and Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney had sought to shift her stance by arguing that even her like-minded ally, President Reagan, is being pushed by Congress toward harsh embargoes.

Zambian President Kenneth D. Kaunda, whose country would lose an important source of hard currency by cutting air links to South Africa, said, “Mrs. Thatcher once again let us down.

“The Commonwealth, however, will go along without her,” Kaunda said. He added that Britain’s isolation had persuaded him to drop a pre-conference threat to withdraw from the organization to protest Thatcher’s South Africa policy.