Angola’s ‘New Flexibility’ on Cuban Troops Could Help Talks With U.S.

Cuban troops will remain in Angola until South Africa puts an end to apartheid and grants independence to neighboring Namibia, Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos has declared.

“From our point of view, there will be total peace and tranquility only when Namibia is free and apartheid is ended,” Dos Santos said at an impromptu press conference here this week after meeting U.S. congressmen. “As long as apartheid continues to threaten us, Cuban forces will remain in Angola,” he said, rejecting demands by South Africa and the United States for the withdrawal of an estimated 37,000 Cuban troops and advisers from this country.

But Dos Santos indicated to the visiting American congressional delegation that Angola is ready to show “new flexibility” on the Cuban issue, the main problem between Angola and the United States, to break the prolonged diplomatic stalemate in southern Africa.

Hopes for Progress

Rep. Howard E. Wolpe (D-Mich.), chairman of a House subcommittee on Africa, said after meeting with Dos Santos and other Angolan officials that he believes it is “possible to make real progress,” particularly on the Cuban issue, in talks here this month between Angolan and U.S. officials.

“My hope,” Wolpe said, “is that if there is some progress in the discussions, South Africa will seize the opportunity to achieve a final resolution of the Namibian problem.”

Much more is involved in Angola than the Reagan Administration’s opposition to what it sees as growing Soviet and Cuban influence in the Third World, and any improvement in Angolan-American relations could lead to important political shifts throughout southern Africa.

If the United States and Angola can come to terms, Western diplomats here believe, then a political resolution might become possible in the long conflict between the Marxist government in Luanda and the right-wing guerrillas of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), who now have American as well as South African support.

An understanding between Angola and the United States on a timetable for the reduction and eventual withdrawal of Cuban troops could also make it possible, diplomats believe, to maximize international pressure on South Africa to agree to independence for Namibia, a former German colony also known as South-West Africa. South Africa continues to administer Namibia in defiance of U.N. resolutions calling for its independence, and Pretoria has conducted a 21-year war with Namibian insurgents.

“If the United States could get a fast timetable for the withdrawal of most Cuban troops, with some verification to ensure they did not filter back, this would be a big victory for Washington and the West,” a European ambassador said. “It would set a lot of other things in motion, too. With a breakthrough here, the changes could be kaleidoscopic.”

Progress on these issues, some other diplomats contend, could also hasten the end of apartheid, South Africa’s system of racial separation and white minority rule, and promote the peaceful resolution of the crisis there.

“Angolan-American relations are one of the very few diplomatic threads that we can use to try and unravel the complex and badly knotted problems in southern Africa,” another European ambassador here commented. “If we can make a bit of progress here, we can use it to achieve a little more somewhere else. . . .

“Angola, because of its position, its politics and South Africa’s sheer hostility toward it, is very important to the peaceful resolution of almost all the half-dozen various conflicts in this region.”

Despite Dos Santos’ insistence that Cuban troops will remain in Angola to counter what it views as continued South African threats, Angola took the initiative of resuming negotiations on this and other issues after breaking off official contacts with the United States last year over the supply of American arms to UNITA guerrillas.

“We can be more flexible on this question,” Venancio de Moura, the deputy foreign minister, said in an interview. “We have not explored all the conditions made available by Angola in our proposal (for a phased withdrawal of most, but not all, Cuban troops) made nearly three years ago.”

Luanda is ready, De Moura continued, to pull Cuban troops out of southern Angola, where they have formed an important defense line against South African attacks over the past decade, as the first step in their eventual withdrawal.

But in return, he said, Angola would want an end to the Reagan Administration’s insistence on a total Cuban pullout as a condition for establishing diplomatic relations as well as U.S. commitments to use its influence to prevent new South African attacks.

“The Cubans are our friends indeed, and they are helping us solve many problems, including health, education, construction and manpower training, and not just assisting with defense,” De Moura said. “A time will come when they are not necessary for our security, but that is not yet the case.”

Other issues likely to be raised in the talks here with U.S. officials include an Angolan request for American assistance in ending South African cross-border operations; the continued American support for UNITA and Washington’s efforts to promote talks between the Angolan government and UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi, and recent congressional proposals to force American oil companies and other firms to sever their ties with Angola.

But the key issue will be the large Cuban military presence, which for the Reagan Administration has been a central concern in its policies in southern Africa.

Cuban troops now man most of Angola’s air defenses and would reinforce Angolan ground units if the country were faced with a major South African attack, as it was in 1981 and again in 1984 when South Africa hit bases belonging to the South-West Africa People’s Organization, the Namibian insurgent group known as SWAPO.

“No country of southern Africa will feel secure as long as apartheid exists,” Dos Santos told reporters after meeting with the American congressional delegation headed by Wolpe. “But every time the military situation shows relative improvement, the Cuban forces are pulled back. The timetable for their withdrawal is a function of the military situation.”

Cubans Guard Oil

The Cuban troops also help protect Luanda, the Angolan capital, and the vital, American-run oil complex at Cabinda, a northwestern Angolan enclave, which South African commandos attempted to destroy two years ago. Cuban officers act as instructors and advisers in many Angolan army units. And diplomats here believe that Cuban troops form an elite guard at the presidential compound on the capital’s outskirts.

Angolan officials, members of the ruling MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola), recall how they asked for Cuban assistance when, just before independence from Portugal in 1975, fighting broke out among the three rival liberation movements, with the United States and Zaire supporting one group, the FNLA (National Front for the Liberation of Angola), and South Africa another, UNITA.

“We (the MPLA) were being squeezed between the Americans and the South Africans,” said Miguel De Carvalho, director of the government’s press center, “and the Cubans, only the Cubans, responded to our call for help. . . .

“The agreement we all signed called for free elections to determine the new government, and we were satisfied with that. But the South Africans and the Americans wanted to install their puppets by military force. But we defeated them with Cuban help. So, when we consider the Cuban issue, we should also remember its origins.”

South African Attack

South Africa launched a major attack in 1975, coming within striking distance of Luanda, and occupied large sections of southern Angola for most of the following decade. South African commanders acknowledge that their troops still operate regularly in southern Angola against Namibian insurgents, but they say they now try to avoid clashes with Angolan units.

Angolan officials contend that although the Angolan army is much stronger and the Cuban forces are largely a second line of defense, the Cubans remain vital to counter threats from South Africa.

“We are now capable of defeating South African ground attacks, and will be able to handle our own air defense in perhaps 10 years,” De Carvalho said. “But until then I would say that we need the Cubans.”

The large Cuban presence, which has grown by an estimated 7,000 in the past three years, has inevitably led to speculation that the troops would not leave even if Angola asked.

“The Cuban presence can be seen as a long-term Soviet investment against the day when Namibia does become independent, and even when there may be a black majority government in South Africa itself,” a European diplomat argued. “Certainly, the whole rationale that brought the Cubans to Angola--this international duty of Communists to defend the revolution worldwide--could then be applied. There is no doubt in my mind that the Cubans and the Soviets want to be there when the revolution comes in South Africa, and Angola is a great staging area.”

But Angolan officials dispute such views, noting that Dos Santos concluded an agreement with Cuba’s President Fidel Castro three years ago on conditions for a phased Cuban withdrawal.