First Step Toward Black Rule

The "internal"settlement seems more settled Beneath a watercolor print of Rhodesia's founder, Cecil Rhodes, that had been borrowed for the occasion, Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith and three moderate black leaders last week signed a document that was billed as the first formal step toward black majority rule for their country. Three months after he first sat down to negotiate with Bishop Abel Muzorewa, the Rev. Ndabaningi Sithole and Chief Jeremiah Chirau, Smith had apparently achieved the "internal" settlement he had been seeking.

Whether it will work is quite another question. The agreement paves the way for formation of an interim government, which will have two tiers: an executive council, composed of Smith and the three blacks, and a ministerial council, whose size is still to be determined but whose membership will be evenly balanced between blacks and whites. Smith will keep his title of Prime Minister, at least for a while, but the present Parliament will be recessed and in theory Smith will be head of the country only when he is chairing the executive council, whose decisions in any case are to be "by consensus."

The primary job of the interim government will be to draw up a constitution for an independent Zimbabwe, the African name for Rhodesia, and hold elections before the end of the year. Toughest of all, it is supposed to arrange a cease-fire with the Patriotic Front, the guerrilla organization that has waged war against the Smith regime for five years. Muzorewa and Sithole argue that most of the guerrillas would back the settlement, but that is not the message that the guerrillas themselves are sending. Since the Salisbury talks began in December, Patriotic Front Leaders Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo have intensified the fighting. Indeed, the day after the agreement was signed, the capital was rocked by several bomb blasts that were almost certainly intended as a guerrilla commentary on the settlement.

This week the U.N. Security Council will take up the Rhodesian question, and probably will denounce the Salisbury plan. Yet the more the settlement takes shape, the more denunciations of it by outside governments will be questioned. Neither Washington nor London was prepared to oppose it openly, though in the past both had maintained that any new government in Salisbury would have to include the Patriotic Front if the war was to be ended and if Soviet and Cuban influence was to be kept out of the area.

The American and British governments want to see if the Smith plan will work and, more important, whether it will lead to a genuine transfer to black rule. The Rhodesian whites have won several minority safeguards, including enough seats in the new Parliament to give them veto power over constitutional changes for ten years. If they also retain control over the armed forces, they could wind up as the real power in the new regime.

British Foreign Secretary David Owen still feels that Nkomo and his Patriotic Front faction should somehow be brought into the settlement, and is believed to be working privately toward that end. But Nkomo is showing no interest, at least publicly. From his Zambia headquarters, he denounced the Salisbury agreement as a "sellout." His verdict: the fighting will continue.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.