Israel Ends Its Trade Embargo Against South Africa : Sanctions: Ban on military contracts is not affected. The move coincides with renewal of ties with the Congo.

Following the lead of the United States, Israel on Sunday renewed full trade with South Africa, a country with which it has nurtured military ties despite concern that these were a prop to the white-led Pretoria government.

Last week, Washington itself lifted economic sanctions against South Africa on the grounds that the last legal bases of racial discrimination had been abolished. Switzerland followed, and Israel lifted its commercial embargo as well as a ban on cultural contacts.

“We are now returning to full trade, economic and cultural cooperation--and also in other fields,” Foreign Minister David Levy told reporters after the government overturned the sanctions.

The signing of new military contracts with South Africa has been barred since 1987 and that ban is still in force. However, Israel continues to have largely secret military dealings with South Africa on contracts that officials say were signed during and before 1987.

“Today’s Cabinet decision did not deal at all with military aspects of earlier decisions, and no change has taken place in that sphere,” an aide to Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said.

Reports from Washington have said that Israel has helped develop South Africa’s rocket program in return for supplies of enriched uranium to make nuclear explosives. Israel also recently tested new rocket engines in South Africa, according to military sources here.

Last year, Israeli media published accounts of a dispute between the Foreign and Defense ministries over continued military cooperation with South Africa. The Foreign Ministry wanted contacts stopped. The Defense Ministry wanted them maintained and eventually won out.

Successive governments in Jerusalem have supplied South Africa with missiles, rocket-launching patrol boats and technical help for the production of jet fighter-bombers.

Israel decided to curtail trade and to ban loans to South Africa in 1987, although coal imports were exempted. Visits by Israeli government officials to South Africa required special approval.

The rules were put in place after several members of the U.S. Congress warned Israel that its links with South Africa might jeopardize Israel’s $3-billion annual aid package from the United States.

Hints that Israel was ready to drop the sanctions surfaced early last month, when Pretoria’s new ambassador to Israel, Johann Lotter, predicted that South African President Frederik W. de Klerk would visit here soon.

On Sunday, Foreign Minister Levy praised De Klerk. “The activity of President De Klerk has been very constructive,” he said.

The decision to lift sanctions was announced in tandem with the renewal of diplomatic relations with the Congo. Those links were cut in 1973. The Congo is the ninth African state to restore ties with Israel since 1982, representing continuing erosion of African support for Arab efforts to isolate the Jewish state.

Some politicians expressed concern that South Africa’s majority black population, aware of Israel’s links with apartheid regimes, might resent the quick Israeli move to normalize trade.

Yossi Beilin, a member of the opposition Labor Party, proposed that Israel invite black leader Nelson Mandela, head of the African National Congress, to visit. Mandela is out of favor here because he supports Palestinian aspirations for a state on the West Bank of the Jordan River.