Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977–1980, Volume XVI, Southern Africa

190. Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in the United Kingdom¹

Washington, February 26, 1978, 2059Z

49711. For Ambassador Brewster only. Subject: Rhodesia: Letter From Owen to Vance.

Following is text of signed letter from Owen dated 24 February 1978 and delivered to Department for the Secretary on February 26. Response sent septel.²

Begin text:

Personal and Confidential

Dear Cy:

I have spent about five hours discussing Rhodesia with Dick Moose over the last few days and this has been very valuable. I am sorry I was not able to devote more time to it but I leave tonight for Jordan and Israel and I also had to spend some hours this week talking to the Rev. Sithole. I think we have stiffened him considerably along agreed lines about our joint concern over the issues of substance still to be decided in the Salisbury talks. I was, however, sorry that Dick Moose decided not to meet Rev. Sithole. I attach great importance to demonstrating to the world that we are open to all the parties to the dispute and in my view we would be unwise to underestimate Sithole’s ability or his toughness as a politician. I believe he could well eventually establish a working relationship with Joshua Nkomo and together they could become a formidable combination. Certainly I cannot see how either alone has sufficient electoral strength to beat Bishop Muzorewa, although any predictions so far ahead of an election are hazardous.

For the first time since we started our joint initiative I detect the possibility of a different analysis of the problem. This is potentially serious and is why I write. Let me assure you that I will not take any unilateral decisions. The differences may be exaggerated by having to compress into a short space of time a difficult analysis and I certainly think it is wise for us all to stop and think. I am not so certain about my own analysis that I am not open to argument and could well change my view, particularly if I felt that you and I differed, for to my knowledge that would be the first time we had differed on any significant issue anywhere in the world since we started working together.

Working backwards, we start, I am sure, from an agreed position. Our long-term objective, besides bringing about a genuine transfer of power and fair and free elections for Zimbabwe, must be to prevent increased Cuban involvement in the Rhodesian situation, which would cause us to lose our current influence on Zambia, and as a lesser, though important, priority to keep Mozambique genuinely non-aligned and if possible with an improving relationship with both our countries. At the same time, we both want to keep good relations with the OAU and retain the momentum of our African policies. However, we need to be tough-minded about what exactly the OAU is. For example, Mauritius’ UN Representative, Krishna Ramphul, takes a line with the UN which is frequently at total variance with that of his own government. There is a feeling amongst some African countries that, over the last year, our two countries have tended to respond only to the vocal and radical voices in the OAU. Even the countries fairly close to Rhodesia are not united and their leaders are privately worried that we tend to lean over too much to accommodate the Patriotic Front, for example. This is thought, if not said, by Botswana, Zaire, Kenya, Malawi and Ghana, while further afield the Arab African states and the French-influenced African states are not as solid on the Patriotic Front as one would think from the decisions of Libreville and Tripoli.

Now, as to the way forward, our initiative always had as its greatest weakness the point on which the Front-Line Presidents not unreasonably focus, namely how we remove Smith or, as President Kaunda puts it “how to bell the cat.” We were able, by a mixture of confident assertion and letting it be known that we were planning for oil sanctions, to convince most people that we meant business, but this was only ever a credible strategy in a scenario in which we were able to convince all the main Rhodesian Nationalist leaders of our proposals, where they were solidly on board and where we only faced an intransigent Smith holding out for white minority rule. We do not face that situation now. We have not been able to rally all the Nationalist leaders to our proposals, and the world sees Mr. Smith as making very significant moves in the direction of a genuine transfer of power in agreement with Bishop Muzorewa whom the world sees as the most popular Nationalist figure inside Rhodesia. Malta opened a chink of light but, as I said to you in New York, there are still major differences and we for our part have very little room, if any, to make more concessions. Frankly, I believe that even if we managed to get the Patriotic Front to support our proposals, we would be a laughing stock if we proposed that we should apply oil sanctions against a Salisbury agreement in the present situation. We could also be severely attacked for backing the forces of violence in an attempt to overthrow a genuine democratic settlement. That is certainly how people here would see it.

I know that most of your people would agree with this analysis but it is important to state this brutally and frankly now because if we can agree on this then we must surely be extremely careful in giving any credence to the view that our main emphasis now should be on trying to get the Patriotic Front to agree to our proposals. Reality dictates that our objective now should be to accept that we will have to somehow widen the area of agreement so that we aim to achieve a settlement at a point, and I do not know where it will be, somewhere between the Salisbury talks and the Anglo/US initiative. Such a settlement may not involve a complete ceasefire but it should aim to minimize the fighting. If you accept this analysis then our task is in a variety of different ways to get the Front-Line Presidents and all the parties to the dispute to recognize that this is the direction in which we are all going to have to go.

Furthermore, it means that if we are to achieve that point of maximum agreement at least one of the Nationalist leaders, and realism dictates that will probably be Joshua Nkomo, must come into some arrangement involving Smith, Muzorewa and Sithole. This does not mean coming in on the basis of the Salisbury talks but widening out from the progress we have made so far and the progress made in the Salisbury talks. How to achieve it is very difficult. I tend to believe, and may well be wrong, that if it were possible by clandestine means to involve Nkomo before the Salisbury talks firm up on an agreement, this would be better since I rather doubt that they will be prepared to give much once an agreement has been fixed and it will then be harder to involve Joshua Nkomo and prevent him taking the route of violence. I well recognize that to do this without alienating the Front-Line Presidents is extremely difficult. But again we must analyze what the Front-Line Presidents are, in particular the relationship between Nkomo and President Kaunda is crucial. My fear is that if we ignore what is going on in Salisbury on the basis of a policy of non-contamination we could find ourselves in a situation where Salisbury reaches agreement but we are identified solely with the Patriotic Front. The only way the Patriotic Front will then be able to influence Salisbury is to increase the violence. This in the short term can only be brought about by reinforcements, probably Cuban, and we, instead of being the negotiators, will become identified with the violence, particularly if we are committed to implementing our proposals through having brought the Patriotic Front to agree to them.

Now I do not underestimate in any way the difficulty of walking this tightrope. But I detect in the US position, and I hope I am wrong, a slight tendency to want to avoid making some of these choices and to feel that by sticking only with the Anglo/US initiative and with the OAU we can stay clean and on the right side. I should stress that I am not saying that we should in any way retract our support for the principles of the Anglo/US initiative. It remains the right policy for us to have pursued, for it offered the hope of a ceasefire. But holding resolutely to that now will not, in my view, achieve either a ceasefire or a negotiated settlement, or a reduction in the violence. Yet in order to exert influence on the negotiation we must not be seen to move precipitately off the Anglo/US initiative. I well recognize that if the Patriotic Front came to us genuinely wanting to discuss our initiative, it would be difficult for us not to respond, but again I stress to you as I did in New York that the onus must be on them to indicate what movement they are making in our direction. If they did indicate such movement we should have to be careful to avoid the danger (which I have described) that we should be expected to deliver on our proposals, when in fact it is no longer in our power to do so. Instead we should aim to use any movement on their part towards us [as] a means of paving the way to direct talks between them and the Salisbury Group—and if that meant Joshua separating from Mugabe, he would be able to do it under the respectable umbrella of our proposals. But in the absence of a clear indication that they are prepared to move towards us in this way (or at least that Joshua is), I do not think that we should have another meeting with them, at any level.

I am sorry for this long letter but I think we should both be clear. I do not believe the present Salisbury settlement is viable and I am very worried about the situation outside the main centers, particularly in the Tribal Trust lands. There are nearly five million people there and it was there that Bishop Muzorewa rallied support and ensured rejection of the 1971 proposals as being unacceptable to the people as a whole (see the enclosed piece by Xan Smiley). Bishop Muzorewa may well start to toughen his demands in the Salisbury talks and we must watch closely his links with Robert Mugabe. If the Salisbury talks fail, in part because of our attempt to stiffen the terms, we must ensure that we are in a position to unify all of the four Nationalist leaders behind our proposals, in which case we would then only face Mr. Smith. This is another reason why we must not back off our proposals but, equally, why we must not offend Bishop Muzorewa.

I enclose a leader [letter] from the New Statesman which represents my views and mainstream Labour Party views.³ For your amusement, on the other side of the page is an account of what it is like to have one’s African policy subjected to questions day by day in the House of Commons. We can and will withstand domestic party political pressures.

I will let you know what happens in the Middle East. With best wishes, yours ever,

David

End text.

Vance

1. Source: Carter Library, National Security Affairs, Brzezinski Material, Cables File, State Department Out, Box 111, 2/18–28/78. Confidential; Cherokee; Immediate; Nodis. Printed from a copy that was received in the White House Situation Room. Drafted by Edmondson. (National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy File, P840142–2167)
2. See Document 191.
3. Presumably the article by Smiley and letter in the New Statesman were attached to the original letter delivered to the Department of State on February 26, which was not found.