Diplomacy: Tears in Lusaka

As host of history's third summit conference of nonaligned nations, Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda was determined to turn his capital of Lusaka into a place fit not only for a king, but also for an emperor, three princes, an archbishop, 14 presidents, eight prime ministers and other assorted representatives from a grand total of 54 states. In little more than four months, the leader of the copper-mining country of 4,000,000 did just that. At a cost of $10.4 million, Kaunda erected a sprawling village complete with broad boulevards, 62 villas (each with swimming pool) and a huge hall capable of seating 1,500 delegates.

The work was done by Yugoslav engineers, who operated on a hang-the-cost basis. They imported lampposts from Britain, spent $33,600 on chartered jets to bring in heavy air-conditioning equipment worth $30,800 from the U.S. Philips recalled its Dutch factory workers from their annual vacation so that it could complete a huge order for electronic equipment, including 60 monitors for a closed-circuit TV system and 1,500 pocket radio bleepers for the delegates.

A force of 400 Zambian chauffeurs-in-training tooled around Lusaka in a fleet of 120 VIP cars, each equipped with a radiotelephone. The opening of the university's fall semester was delayed so that overflow guests could be housed in the dormitories.

Cannons boomed as heads of state entered Mulungushi Hall on the opening day. Yugoslavia's Marshal Tito, who pioneered nonaligned summitry with a 1961 conference in Belgrade, was there, resplendent in a vanilla-white suit. But Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, impresario of the Cairo summit of 1964, was busy at home, and his absence seemed to underscore the fact that the nonaligned countries no longer wield the influence they once did when the U.S. and Soviet Union assiduously wooed uncommitted nations.

Bit of Controversy. The delegates haggled over which Cambodia to recognize, the Lon Nol regime in Phnom-Penh or Prince Sihanouk's outfit in Peking; they decided to seat neither. Mme. Nguyen Thi Binh, foreign minister of the Viet Cong's Provisional Revolutionary Government, was welcomed as an observer after a debate that Kaunda dismissed as merely "a bit of controversy." The "nonaligned" posture of the conference was bent even further when Zambian police arrested 16 Western reporters and deported three of them. The men were detained, explained the Zambian government, because "the monopoly press of the West" was seeking to "defame" the summit.

In his 50-minute address, Kaunda elaborated on that old, old theme. He castigated "powerful nations" for forcing developing countries to tender "political and ideological support in return for economic assistance." He wept as he spoke of the disenfranchisement of black majorities in South Africa, Rhodesia and Portugal's African colonies. It was symptomatic of the essential nonalignment of the nonaligned these days, however, that Kaunda's proposal of formal censure of white minority rule in those states was hotly opposed by Swaziland, Lesotho and other countries that depend heavily on trade with South Africa.