U.S. and Britain Veto Proposal for U.N. Economic Sanctions on S. Africa

The United States and Britain joined Friday in vetoing a Security Council proposal that would have imposed sweeping U.N. economic sanctions against South Africa.

West Germany cast the only other negative vote as the 15-nation council ended two days of debate on a draft resolution submitted by five nonaligned nations. France and Japan abstained, and the 10 other members voted in favor.

U.S. Ambassador Herbert S. Okun announced the U.S. opposition to the draft resolution in a statement delivered before the vote. The United States thus continued its historic opposition to mandatory international economic sanctions against the white minority regime, even though Congress last year barred the importation into the United States of gold krugerrands and of some South African products, cut airline links, banned the sale of computer equipment to South Africa, prohibited new U.S. investments in South Africa and forbade loans to government entities.

These measures were included in the vetoed proposal, the first attempt in the United Nations to impose economic sanctions since the state of emergency decreed last June heightened racial violence in South Africa.

“Apartheid must be eliminated,” Okun said. “But this should be done in a manner which enhances South Africa’s ability to develop into a prosperous, multiracial democracy and the principal engine for development of the southern half of the continent. . . . Mandatory sanctions imposed by the international community at this time will result in the progressive destruction of the South African economy and the heightening of repression in that country as those now in power attempt to consolidate their hold.”

Okun based his opposition on the Reagan Administration’s conviction that each nation should be free to determine its actions and that internationally imposed sanctions would be “all but impossible” to enforce.

“Yet another serious objection,” Okun continued, would be the difficulty of devising a “yardstick” to measure whether enough progress had been made by the Pretoria government to warrant lifting sanctions. A U.S. official who spoke on condition that he not be identified explained that Washington feared that the Soviet Union, as a permanent council member with veto power, could oppose the lifting of sanctions even if South African progress proved satisfactory to Western nations.

Okun, after the meeting, spoke to reporters of U.S. regret over the breakdown of Western unity that resulted in Italy’s joining nine nonaligned and Communist Bloc states in supporting the draft. He conceded U.S. disappointment that Venezuela, normally a faithful ally, also joined the majority. If Italy and Venezuela had abstained, the necessary nine favorable votes would have been lacking, and the United States would have been spared the embarrassment of a veto.