Challenge at Sea

One of international diplomacy's worst-kept secrets is that Prime Minister Harold Wilson's oil embargo against Rhodesia has been a dismal failure. An even greater failure, however, was Britain's inability to see what was coming, since Britain herself is an old hand at blockade running and embargo breaking. Last week a new hand at the game sent Wilson into somewhat of a tizzy.

He is a wily South African entrepreneur named Rudolf Raphaely, who was attempting to run 400,000 tons of crude oil from the Persian Gulf to Rhodesia's main oil terminal—the Portuguese Mozambique port of Beira, which is connected with landlocked Rhodesia by a 187-mile pipeline. For weeks British warships had discouraged tankers from putting into Beira. Undaunted, one of Raphaely's ships, flying a Greek flag, quietly loaded 18,000 tons of crude in the Iranian port of Bandar Mashur and steamed around the northern coast of Africa to Dakar, where it changed its name to Ioanna V and hoisted a Panamanian flag. Outside Beira, the British frigate Plymouth warned the tanker to keep on going, and the Greek government, which had banned all oil shipments to Rhodesia, lifted the captain's papers, claiming that he was operating under an illegal Panamanian registration. Ignoring the hubbub, loanna V anchored a mile offshore. By then, a second Raphaely tanker, the Manuela, with another 16,000 tons of crude, was also sailing for Beira.

A 40-Hour Delay. Off to Portugal rushed Lord Walston, British Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs. The Portuguese, who make no secret of their support for Smith, only shrugged, refusing to interrupt "normal commerce" in Mozambique. Back in London, the Wilson government requested an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council and began drafting a resolution that—if approved—would give U.N. sanction to the use of British force in stopping Rhodesia-bound oil.

Then began one of the most bizarre incidents in the U.N.'s often bizarre history. Moussa L. Keita of Mali, president during April of the 15-nation council, simply refused to call a meeting. In league with other Black African nations opposed to Ian Smith, Keita was trying to buy time, and to draw up some stiffer amendments calling for total mandatory sanctions that would be enforced mainly by the British. Growing more impatient by the hour, U.S. Ambassador Arthur Goldberg met with British Representative Lord Caradon and delegates from nine other member nations, and the group staged a 61-hour sit-in in the Security Council chamber in an effort to get Keita to call the meeting. When it finally convened at week's end—40 hours later than Britain requested—the pro-British majority carried the day, and the limited sanctions were approved. That left the next move up to the tankers.