Angola Truce OKd; S. Africa to Withdraw

Angola, Cuba and South Africa, taking their first concrete step toward peace in southwestern Africa, declared an immediate cease-fire Monday in the 13-year-old Angolan civil war, and Pretoria pledged to begin withdrawing its troops there by Wednesday.

In the wake of their fourth round of peace talks last week in Geneva, the countries also agreed to ask the United Nations to implement, beginning Nov. 1, the long-delayed plan for independence in Namibia, the mineral-rich territory that South Africa has ruled for 73 years.

Firm agreement on Namibian independence still depends on overcoming one of the more difficult hurdles in the U.S.-mediated peace talks--drawing up a timetable for withdrawal of the 50,000 Cuban troops helping Angola’s government fight a rebel group supported by the United States and South Africa.

But in the joint announcement Monday, Angola and Cuba promised to reach agreement by Sept. 1 on a timetable for the Cuban withdrawal that would be “acceptable to all parties.”

‘Arduous Road’

“This is the first step on a very long and arduous road to stability in the very important region of southwestern Africa,” South African Foreign Minister Roelof (Pik) Botha declared at a news conference in Pretoria.

Angola and Cuba prefer a slow withdrawal of Cuban forces over the next four years, while South Africa has pushed for a more rapid pullout. South Africa’s negotiators said last week that they would agree to Namibian independence by next June 1 if Cuba withdraws its troops from Angola by the same date.

On Monday, Botha repeated his government’s position that Namibian independence “is linked very clearly and categorically to the staged and total withdrawal of Cuban forces from Angola.” A fifth round of talks between the countries was set for Aug. 22.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Chester A. Crocker has led the peace initiative, which is considered one of the major international diplomatic successes of the Reagan presidency.

Botha said South Africa planned to complete its troop pullout from Angola by Sept. 1. South Africa withdrew its troops from Angola after an accord in 1984, but that agreement fell apart and it recently has had an estimated 3,000 soldiers stationed there.

Monitoring Cease-Fire

Botha said mechanisms are in place for monitoring the cease-fire, but he declined to describe them.

Meanwhile, South Africa still has as many as 50,000 troops in Namibia, also known as South-West Africa, the large territory Pretoria has ruled in defiance of 10-year-old U.N. resolutions. The complex plan for U.N.-supervised elections in Namibia calls for, among other things, a pullout of South African troops over a period of seven months.

South African President Pieter W. Botha on Monday invited U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar to South Africa for discussions on Namibian independence.

Foreign Minister Botha said South Africa is concerned about who will pay the $600-million tab for Namibia’s elections and how Pretoria’s $120 million in annual economic aid to Namibia “will be reduced and eventually replaced.”

Major Rebel Groups

So far, the parties in the Angolan peace talks have reached no public agreement on the role of three major rebel groups in the region: the Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), the South-West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO) and the African National Congress (ANC).

UNITA, supported by the CIA as well as South Africa, has been fighting the government since Angola’s independence from Portugal in 1975. Led by Jonas Savimbi, UNITA is up against the largest deployment of Cuban troops in the world.

American officials have said they hope an Angolan accord would eventually include Savimbi in a coalition government, but thus far Luanda has refused to negotiate with UNITA. UNITA is not a party to the peace talks.

A member of UNITA’s ruling central committee, Alcides Sakala, said Monday that the rebel group would continue to fight despite the cease-fire.

“There will be no lasting peace in Angola unless we are brought into the negotiations, something I think will be the next step,” Sakala told the Reuters news agency in Lisbon.

Namibia War

SWAPO has been fighting a 22-year guerrilla war for independence in Namibia, often from bases inside Angola, and the death toll in that civil war now exceeds 20,000.

Since 1985, Namibia has been ruled by a multiracial transitional government, installed by South Africa, which includes representatives of SWAPO. The vast territory, on the coast of Africa bordering Angola to the north and South Africa to the east and south, has only 1.3 million people, fewer than 10% of them white.

Although the country has some 40 political parties, many analysts believe SWAPO would win a free election there.

The ANC, the principal guerrilla group fighting the white-minority government in South Africa, has at least five military training camps in Angola. South Africa said last week that closing those ANC bases was a condition for peace in the region.

Since talks in New York last month, during which Angola, Cuba and South Africa agreed upon 14 principles for peace in the region, the fighting in southern Angola has waned.

The last major clash between the two sides inside Angola occurred in June, when Cuban and Angolan forces attacked South African troops guarding a dam a few miles north of the Namibian border. South Africa said 12 of its soldiers were killed.

At least 45 South African soldiers have been killed in Angola in the last year, and Pretoria has been under increasing pressure at home to pull out of the war there.