Pact for Angola Pullout, Namibia Freedom Signed

Cuba, Angola and South Africa signed a historic agreement in this equatorial African capital Tuesday, committing themselves to a 27-month withdrawal of the approximately 50,000 Cuban troops in Angola and free elections next year in Namibia, the vast territory that South Africa has ruled for 73 years.

The pact, capping negotiations begun by American diplomats nearly eight years ago and more recently supported by the Soviet Union as well, also sets April 1 as the date for implementing a 10-year-old U.N. plan for independence in Namibia, also known as South-West Africa.

“This is the end of a sad chapter in Africa’s modern history and the beginning of a new chapter . . . of African development and stability,” said Chester A. Crocker, assistant secretary of state for African affairs and the mediator of the talks. In an interview, he added that it would “transform the strategic environment of southwestern Africa.”

The signing, in the Congolese presidential palace on the banks of the wide Congo River, was considered especially important on a continent where most nations fear the military adventurism of both South Africa and Cuba.

It will be followed Dec. 22 in New York by the signing of a treaty under which the countries will exchange prisoners of war and formally invite the United Nations into the peace process.

Senior American diplomats in Brazzaville said the agreement opens the way for the Soviet-backed Angolan government to begin national reconciliation talks with the U.S.-backed Angolan rebel forces of Jonas Savimbi, who have been fighting the government since Angola’s independence from Portugal 13 years ago.

Savimbi’s National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), based in the southeastern city of Jamba, has not been a participant in the talks. But Savimbi has said he supports them and would like to participate someday in a coalition government. Angolan leaders have recently expressed their willingness to talk with UNITA.

“This agreement will pave the way for peace,” said Antonio dos Santos Franca, Angolan deputy defense minister and chief of the Angolan negotiating team. He said it heralded “a new era in relationships in southwestern Africa.”

“There’s going to be reconciliation in Angola,” Crocker said. “The only question is when and under what model. Will they wait until the last Cuban is on the boat or will they see the wisdom of acting earlier?”

The United States provides about $15 million a year in assistance to UNITA, and President-elect George Bush has said that the aid would continue. South Africa also has supported UNITA, but Pretoria withdrew its 2,500 troops from southern Angola in August after a negotiated cease-fire.

U.S. officials estimate that the Soviet Union will contribute about $1.5 billion this year in military assistance to the Angolan government.

Under the timetable agreed upon Tuesday, Cuba will send 3,000 troops home from Angola by April 1, the same day that the U.N seven-month plan for Namibian independence begins. Namibia, a mineral-rich land twice the size of California, lies between Angola and South Africa on the southwest coast of the continent.

The agreement calls for all remaining Cuban troops to retreat north of the 15th Parallel, about 200 miles north of the Namibian border, by Aug. 1, 1989. By Nov. 1 of that year, 25,000 Cuban soldiers will have left Angola, and the remainder will move 100 miles farther north, above the 13th Parallel near the strategic Benguela Railway. An additional 8,000 Cuban troops will depart by April 1, 1990, 5,000 more by Oct. 1, 1990, and the final 5,000 by July 1, 1990.

Pretoria to Pull Out

Under the U.N plan for Namibia, which has not been invoked since it was passed in 1978, Pretoria will withdraw most of its estimated 35,000 troops from Namibia by July 1, 1989, leaving a force of 1,500 in two base camps.

A multinational U.N. peacekeeping force will take over the country’s security until U.N.-supervised elections on Nov. 1, 1989.

The agreement also sets up a joint commission, with the United States and Soviet Union as observers, to monitor the Cuban troop withdrawal from Angola.

Cuba’s chief negotiator, Deputy Foreign Minister Ricardo Alarcon, called it “a fair and just peace” for the region.

“We have come a long way, and now we can begin to look to the future,” Alarcon said. “It means a people with so much courage (the Angolans) will finally be able to lead their lives in peace.”

The agreement is important to South Africa’s desire for acceptance in Africa, where black leaders have been sharply critical of the white minority-led government and apartheid, its system of racial separation.

“South Africa is like a zebra,” South African Foreign Minister Roelof F. (Pik) Botha told several hundred people at the signing ceremony. “You cannot put a bullet in the white stripe and think it will not die. It will die.”

Botha, joined by Defense Minister Magnus Malan, added that his country “stands ready to play a role in Africa and southern Africa.”

Anatoly L. Adamishin, the Soviet Union’s deputy foreign minister, praised the “reasonable position adopted by South Africa” in the talks. He said he hopes that the agreement will “facilitate settlement of other problems in southern Africa, such as the dismantling of apartheid.”

Adamishin added that Soviet support for the agreement, known as the Brazzaville Protocol, exemplifies a desire under President Mikhail S. Gorbachev “to untie regional knots, especially in the Third World.”

Crocker described the Soviet Union’s support for the talks, involving Soviet allies Cuba and Angola, as crucial.

“It has been a case study of superpower effort to support the resolution of regional conflict,” Crocker said in saluting the “hard work and professional dedication of Soviet officials.”

The Angolan civil war, which began when Portugal left its colony in 1975, has cost an estimated 60,000 to 120,000 lives, displaced 750,000 and turned the oil- and diamond-rich country into one of the continent’s least-developed countries.

Within weeks of Angolan independence, Cuban troops arrived to support the new government, and South Africa, worried about the Soviet-backed Cuban troops’ threat to neighboring Namibia, sent its own troops into Angola to help UNITA.

In Namibia, the South-West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO) has, with Soviet support, fought a 22-year bush war for independence despite heavy losses because of South Africa’s overwhelming military advantage. That war, which SWAPO waged from bases in southern Angola, has claimed more than 22,000 lives.

The United Nations has designated SWAPO as the “sole and authentic” representative of Namibia, a country of 1.2 million people with a dozen ethnic groups and 40 political parties. Since 1985, a multi-racial “transitional government,” appointed by South Africa’s president, has presided over Namibian affairs. But South Africa retains veto power over its actions.

International Pawn

Namibia has been an international pawn for decades. South Africa took over the colony from Germany in 1915, and much of the German heritage remains.

South Africa had balked at granting Namibian independence, arguing that the Cuban troops in Angola might overrun the country and allow the African National Congress, the guerrilla group fighting Pretoria, to establish bases there.

SWAPO would probably win a free election in Namibia, most political analysts say.

But in recent months, as South Africa announced its willingness to trade Cuban troop withdrawal in Angola for Namibian independence, SWAPO leaders have toned down their Marxist rhetoric, apparently trying to ease the fears of South Africa as well as Namibia’s 80,000 whites.

Pretoria currently provides about $400 million annually in assistance to Namibia, which uses the South African rand as currency, carries a South African postal code and stocks its shelves with South African goods.

“I don’t think they’re going to build socialism in this part of the world,” Adamishin said of SWAPO. “And there are few people in the Soviet Union who would advise them to build a socialist society in this particular situation in Africa.

“Everybody has to deal with realities,” he added. “And one of the realities of Namibia is that it has very strong economic ties with South Africa.”

U.S. mediator worked eight years on peace plan. Page 24.