Word: british
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...conference got underway, there was some progress. A team of skillful mediators from the British Foreign Office, directed by Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington, prodded the two sides to agree on an agenda for discussion. The British hope for settlement along the lines suggested in Lusaka: a cease-fire between the 15,000 troops of the front and Salisbury's 20,000 soldiers and hired mercenaries, constitutional changes to reduce special privileges for Zimbabwe's 230,000 whites and bring black majority rule, and free elections to install a new government under a more democratic constitution. They would retain some safeguards...
Gradually, in response to the British proposals both delegations began to indicate their positions on the issues, and as nearly everyone expected, their positions differed drastically. Nkomo and Mugabe wanted to discuss "pre-independence arrangements," or measures to be taken before Zimbabwe can be officially decolonized by Britain amd made independent; in particular, they hoped to concentrate talks on the replacement of current white-controlled police and military forces with their own black troops. But Muzorewa would have none of that. Rather than transfer leadership of the police and military forces to the Front--in effect, ceding control...
...result of Smith's protest and Muzorewa's about-face, the London conference may have trouble convincing the parties involved to compromise. Some observers say the actions of Salisbury delegation may have foiled the long-term British strategy for the conference. For instance, the The Financial Times has reported that British mediators may be hoping to win acceptance of constitutional changes mainly from the Muzorewa government, in the expectation that Front forces would eventually present unreasonable demands and break up the conference. Then, according to the Times, the Thatcher government in Whitehall could recognize the Salisbury government and refuse...
DESPITE THE LURE of possible British recognition for Zimbabwe, Bishop Muzorewa may have some good reasons for trying to delay or avoid a constitutional settlement. It seems highly unlikely that the London conference could end successfully without acceptance of British proposals for new elections: and yet elections are about the last thing Muzorewa wants to face right now. The electorate, both white and black, is dissatisfied with his failure to bring a speedy end to the war with patriotic Front forces. Since he took office on June 1, more than 2,000 people have been killed fighting. Hundreds more have...
...Palestinian problem is the most intractable part of the Middle Eastern conflict. The Palestinians are fragmented, geographically and politically. Those who live in the territory of the former British mandate of Palestine are divided into two groups--Israeli Arabs, and the Arabs of the occupied West Bank and Gaza strip. Those who left Palestine either in 1948, when Israel became a state, or in 1967, when Israel moved into the West Bank and Gaza, are dispersed all over the Middle East, in Jordan, in the Emirates, in Saudi Arabia, in Syria, in Lebanon where the guerillas of the Palestine Liberation...