POISED BETWEEN PEACE AND WAR

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Overall, the formula seemed acceptable to most Rhodesians, blacks as well as whites. But it angered some Rhodesian black nationalists, as well as the five African "frontline" Presidents (of Zambia, Tanzania, Botswana, Mozambique and Angola) with whom Kissinger had been dealing. The five leaders met in Lusaka, Zambia, and denounced the settlement as outlined by Smith.

What was going on? Had Kissinger misled one side or the other? Had Zambia's President Kenneth Kaunda and Tanzania's President Julius Nyerere, to whom Kissinger had explained the formula, changed their minds? Kissinger-watchers noted that the Secretary had given Smith a written list of key points but showed nothing in writing to the African Presidents; Smith might easily have assumed that the black leaders had seen and approved the same paper, but that was not the case.

Among other things, the African leaders objected to the notion of the council of state as supreme, the allotment of the two security ministries to whites, and Smith's inference that the new constitution would be drawn up inside Rhodesia. They also wanted greater speed: "We are talking about majority rule in four to six weeks," said Julius Nyerere, "with the formation of an interim government." Nyerere also noted wryly that Smith had ended his TV speech with Churchill's famous line: "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." Said Nyerere: "If Smith says it is the end of the beginning, we are saying we will go on; we will go on for the next ten years."

Most important, the African leaders demanded that Britain, as the Rhodesians' titular colonial sovereign, convene a conference to iron out details about the makeup of the interim government, and take part in a subsequent constitutional conference as well. Snorted Salisbury's Foreign Affairs Minister P.K. van der Byl: "It simply shows the irresponsibility and unreliability of those we have to deal with."

Perhaps the greatest risk involved in the Lusaka statement was that it might give Smith a chance to back out of his agreement. Twice before — in talks with Harold Wilson aboard the Royal Navy ships H.M.S. Tiger in 1966 and H.M.S. Fearless in 1968 — Smith had seemingly agreed to end Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI). But then he returned to Salisbury "to consult my colleagues," and changed his mind. He actually initialed an agreement for ultimate majority rule in 1971, but a British commission went to Rhodesia in early 1972 and decided that the proposal was unacceptable to black Rhodesians. This time the pressure on Smith was far greater — and to some extent he may have been influenced by a U.S.-British offer to provide $1.5 billion to $2 billion as a "safety net" to protect Rhodesian whites against losses incurred by a transition to black rule.