Smith: Owen devious, shifty

Press, 10 April 1979, Page 8

Smith: Owen devious, shifty

NZPA-Reuter Salisbury The Rhodesian Prime Minister (Mr lan Smith) has lambasted the British Foreign Secretary (Dr David Owen), describing him as “devious” and “the most shifty” of statesmen he has encountered in talks on Rhodesia’s future. In contrast in an interview with the “Sunday Mail” newspaper, he said the former British Prime Minister, Sir Harold Wilson, never went back on a promise, and the former United States Secretary of State (Dr Henry Kissinger) was a strictly honest man of great ability. ■ “I don’t think anyone in this world would argue with me that the worst of them all is the one we have been dealing with now. That is Dr Owen,” he said.

“I’m sorry to say it, but he has been the most devious of all, the most shifty. He has had no compunction whatever about going back completely on solemn undertakings which have been given.

“Although I had arguments with people like Harold Wilson, for example, I don’t think I can ever say that of him. "We disagreed, but I can never recall him going back on an undertaking or a promise.” Asked about Dr Kissinger, with whom he first agreed on majority rule in talks in South Africa in 1976, Mr Smith said: “He is obviously a man of great ability. In the short time of his dealings with us, he was strictly honest, clear, and above board.”

But their agreement had collapsed because Dr Kissinger had been “conned” by Britain and Presidents of black African States, Mr Smith stated.

Mr Smith, whose 15 years as Prime Minister are to end this month after One-man, one-vote elections, said he would remain “very much involved” in politics as leader of Rhodesia’s white minority until the country won international recognition. He is expected to hold a senior Cabinet post in the

new white-black coalition of national unity. In Dar-es-Salaam, the Tanzanian capital, the Rhodesian guerrilla leader, Mr Joshua Nkomo, has angrily spurned suggestions that he might make his peace with the winners of this month’s elections and became the first president of the new black-ruled State of Zimbabwee.

The suggestion was made by the Rev. Ndabaningi Sithole, one of three black contenders in the April 17 elections, which Mr Nkomo and his allies have denounced and vowed to disrupt.

Mr Sithole said that if his party won, it would offer Mr Nkomo the Presidency and give his supporters places in Parliament, the Civil Service, and the diplomatic corps.

But Mr Nkomo told reporters: “Tell Sithole to go to Hell. I don’t want to be President of rubbish.”

The guerrilla chiefs met leaders of black Africa’s "front-line” States in Dar-es-Salaam yesterday, and the unity of their guerrilla armies is believed to have been the main topic. Eleven Salisbury schoolboys will boost Rhodesia’s tightly-stretched security forces during the elections. The boys, aged 16 and 17, have volunteered for duty, and they will be trained alongside the country’s “grandad’s army” of men aged between 50 and 59.