110. Telegram From the Consulate in Cape Town to the Department of State1
598. From Embassy Cape Town. Dept please pass USUN and White House per reftel. Subj: (C) Namibia Proximity Talks: Delivery of Secretary’s Oral Message to Foreign Minister Botha. Ref: State 64211.2
1. C–Entire text.
2. I reached Pik Botha by telephone at 0830 Cape Town time March 16 and, at his request, read him the Secretary’s oral message (reftel). He asked me to read it slowly so he could take notes; he later read it back to me with amazing accuracy.
3. At the end he said he was not quite clear what the Secretary meant by saying the Proximity Talks are for the purpose of reaching an understanding on the implementation of the proposal and not to re-negotiate the proposal; he wondered if I had any additional explanation. I said I could not embellish the Secretary’s words and had been given no additional explanation to provide him on this point. I thought it was clear.
4. Pik then asked whether something new was implied in saying that the Secretary and other Ministers were prepared to “meet with all parties to discuss implementation.” I said I took it at face value and would not wish to interpret it further. It was consistent with what we had said earlier, which the Cape Town Five explained to Fourie yesterday, i.e. that we had notified various parties of the talks and said that if they should wish to send representatives to New York at the time of the talks the Five would certainly make arrangements to meet with them and that, given the shortness of time, they cannot be assured an opportunity to meet with all (and I put oral stress on all) five of the Foreign Ministers, but we will make every effort to arrange Ministerial-level meetings. I said it was unfortunate that an issue had been created on both sides over the question of status and the semantic problem of invitation versus noninvitation. It was my impression that the format of the talks being proposed was essentially the same as for those last year except that we had taken the initiative of notifying internal parties and saying that if they wished to be in New York at that time, arrangements would be made to meet them. I added that it [Page 294] simply complicated matters and made it harder to get to the real issues if arguments were stimulated over status. In this connection I quoted back to him a statement made to me by Neil Van Heerden last night to the effect that the SAG “had never insisted on the other parties being given principal status.” I said if this were the case and if we could deal with the substantive issues of implementation as opposed to procedural ones, then surely we could get things going.
5. Pik did not confirm Van Heerden’s statement but thanked me for conveying the Secretary’s message and said he would immediately inform the Prime Minister. He added that he would let me know of any reply.
6. We subsequently learned that Pik personally telephoned Kirkpatrick of the NNF and someone (probably Mudge) in the DTA to let them know of the Secretary’s letter. Kirkpatrick told us this morning that it was obvious even last night that Pik wanted to “get the show on the road.” Marais of the DTA told the British Embassy that news of the Secretary’s letter was “what we needed.”
7. British Ambassador Scott said he had received instructions from Dr. Owen to support the Secretary’s message with a similar one from him in which Owen said all who go to New York “will be met at Ministerial level.”
8. Comment: It appears that the messages from the Secretary and Dr. Owen have broken the log jam. Present indications are that NNF, SWAPO–D, DTA, Aktur, and Bishop de Vries, are planning to come. Internal SWAPO is also apparently planning to have at least three of their members join the SWAPO delegation. One hopes there will be time to hammer out the main issues between the SAG and SWAPO in the time available.
- Source: Carter Library, National Security Affairs, Brzezinski Material, Cables File, Africa, Box 20, 3/79. Confidential; Sensitive; Immediate; Nodis. Printed from a copy that was received in the White House Situation Room.↩
- See Document 109.↩