Word: beira
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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With a flamboyant wave of the Union Jack, the Royal Navy was ordered to blockade the Portuguese Mozambican port of Beira, where a new oil pipeline led into Rhodesia. The blockade lasted ten years, but was only window dressing. Shipments to Rhodesia continued to arrive at the old petroleum port of Lourenço Marques (now Maputo), several hundred miles to the south. From there the oil was shepherded by Shell Mozambique, a U.K.-incorporated firm, into the hands of South African brokers, who sent it north by rail through Mozambique to Rhodesia...
King Duarte II of Portugal, 68, whose family was deposed in 1910, still lives outside Lisbon but has no ambition to reign. His bachelor son, the Prince of Beira, 30, a businessman who also lives in Portugal, would be the heir if his former subjects voted to restore the Braganza dynasty...
...reservists, will probably have little trouble containing the guerrilla insurgency. But Rhodesia's diplomatic and economic isolation as a result of the Mozambique action will be keenly-and immediately-felt. The loss of an outlet to the Indian Ocean via railway links to the Mozambique ports of Beira and Maputo immensely complicates Salisbury's trade with the outside world. Nearly 40% of Rhodesia's exports and imports moved along those rail lines. Alternate routes through South Africa are already congested...
Strained Economy. The hot pursuit of guerrillas into Mozambique seemed an almost suicidal provocation, since Smith's government, primarily for economic reasons, cannot afford to alienate Mozambique. Landlocked Rhodesia sends more than half its exports (principally tobacco, asbestos and nickel) through Mozambique to the Indian Ocean ports of Beira and Maputo (formerly Lourenço Marques); Machel could cut off those lifelines. Indeed, at week's end Mozambique authorities arrested 16 Rhodesian railwaymen at the border station of Malvernia, forcing Rhodesia to close the line to Maputo in protest (the Beira line was unaffected...
...fear is that the Cubans might move to Mozambique and join the black Rhodesian guerrillas based there in full-scale warfare against Ian Smith's white regime in Rhodesia. That worry was sharpened last week by reports that Soviet tanks had been landed at the Mozambique port of Beira...