Botha Denies He Interfered in U.S. Senate Vote

Foreign Minister Roelof F. (Pik) Botha denied on Thursday that he had interfered in U.S. politics by making telephone calls to several senators to urge them to support President Reagan’s veto of sanctions against South Africa.

Botha also declared that he would not apologize for making the calls during the sanctions debate on the Senate floor Wednesday.

“It is not for me to apologize for speaking to American senators,” Botha told newsmen here. “I know the American people may not agree with me, but I also know they will give me the right to talk to their legislators and to them.”

Botha’s telephone calls caused considerable controversy, both because of the brashness of his approach and because he warned that South Africa would stop buying American grain and would block transshipment of U.S. grain to neighboring countries if the sanctions were upheld. Several senators accused him of using “bribery and intimidation” to stop the enactment of sanctions.

Likened to Condemned Man

But Botha, comparing South Africa to a prisoner facing the death sentence, said: “It is almost like hanging a man and saying, when he complains about the tightness of the rope around his neck, ‘Look, don’t interfere with your own execution.’ ”

After the Senate voted Thursday to override Reagan’s veto and approve the sanctions legislation, Botha said the sanctions were based on emotions and twisted perceptions about developments in South Africa.

“It is clear to me that the decision was taken regardless of our reform program,” the foreign minister said, “and no reason or argument could stop this emotional wave. . . . I hope from my side that they will now leave us alone for a while and let us, as South Africans, give attention to solving our problems with less interference from outside.”

Botha told newsmen that his telephone calls to several Farm Belt senators, warning them that South Africa would cancel its planned purchases of American wheat if sanctions were imposed, were not intended as threats but to “explain the consequences of these intended actions.”

‘Send a Signal Back’

If the American sanctions legislation was intended to “send a signal” to the white-led minority government here, as many of its backers asserted, South Africa’s actions in canceling grain purchases were meant, Botha said, “to send a signal back. . . . It’s important for people there to realize we are not pushovers.

“I did not speak as an enemy,” he continued, “I spoke as a friend. . . . I do believe I have the right to tell my friends, just as they have a right to tell me, and they make use of that right, just where we differ. Since when can’t we differ like gentlemen? What is achieved by calling each other ugly names?”

Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and a sponsor of the sanctions bill, had described Botha’s lobbying as a “despicable” attempt at “intimidation and bribery.”

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), a longtime critic of South Africa, told the Senate: “We should not let the bullies and thugs of Pretoria intimidate the Senate of the United States. Doesn’t this tell us a little about the kind of people who are running that government?”

Dismisses Criticism

Botha, dismissing the criticism as “ridiculous and laughable,” later sent Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) an eight-page letter explaining and defending his actions, which by then had become an issue in the debate.

“I know that the U.S. Senate would not be insensitive to the consequences of millions of people in southern Africa of punitive measures supposedly directed at the South African government,” he wrote. “Why is it wrong to communicate views of this nature to individual senators and to invite them to debate with me on the merits?”

He explained to newsmen that the threatened halt to South African purchases of American grain was “politically inevitable” once the United States banned his country’s exports of fruit and other agricultural products. “My government has to respond to our farmers just as the American government must respond to its farmers,” he maintained.

South Africa had expected to buy about 400,000 metric tons of wheat in the coming year, up sharply from purchases averaging about 160,000 tons in the past three years. Even at expanded levels, however, its purchases constitute less than 2% of projected American wheat exports of more than 25 million tons this year.

While South Africa now will prohibit shipments of American grain through its ports to neighboring countries, it will not halt purchases from other suppliers, Botha said. “No one will starve,” he added. “We are not punishing our neighbors.”