The Angola/Namibia Agreements: Likely Results and Policy Implications

Abstract

The June 1988 Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Moscow produced a communique suggesting that an agreement on Angola and Namibia could be signed that year. Since then the State Department has mediated eight rounds of talks between South Africa and the Communist regimes of Angola and Cuba, with a Soviet observer present and the Angolan National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) resistance excluded. The tripartite accord provides that South Africa will grant Namibia full independence by November 1989, with the United Nations to implement and oversee the process beginning on 1 April 1989. In 1985, the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence issued a report entitled "Soviet Presence in the UN Secretariat." This report concluded: The Soviet Union is effectively using the UN Secretariat in the conduct of its foreign relations, and the West is paying for most of it.