S. Africa Report Not U.S. Policy, Officials Say

Commerce Department officials said today that a government report describing the South African government as a “repressive regime” does not reflect official Reagan Administration policy.

The report, which South Africa has branded “insulting and hostile,” was an internal Commerce Department assessment of conditions in that nation, department officials said.

“Our position on South Africa has been made clear through the President,” said B. Jay Cooper, a spokesman for Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige.

‘Very Junior Person’

Bruce Smart, Commerce undersecretary for international trade, said the report is “an internal document written by a very junior person.” Smart expressed surprise that so much had been made of the fact that “one person somewhere writes one paragraph in a 40-page document that someone somewhere might take offense to.”

Cooper said Baldrige and other top department officials had been unaware of the contents of the report, written by the agency’s field office in South Africa.

However, he said it apparently had been “cleared through the appropriate people in the (U.S.) Embassy there.”