Word: ivor
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...diplomatic shuttle, but not exactly in the Kissinger mode: no custom-fitted Air Force jet, no phalanx of aides, bodyguards and reporters. British Envoy Ivor Richard last week hopped from capital to capital in southern and eastern Africa in a modest chartered twin-engined Hawker Siddeley executive jet, arrived at airports with little fanfare and had only four Foreign Office staffers in tow. Richard, who is Britain's chief delegate to the United Nations, was desperately trying to breathe life into the seemingly paralyzed efforts to transfer power peacefully from Rhodesia's 271,000 whites...
...press conference: "I am convinced that in the end we will get a settlement to this problem." Other British diplomats are not so buoyant. Complained one last week: "It's a fearful slog. Both sides, black and white, are tossing tantrums and refusing to talk common sense. If Ivor gets anywhere with these adamant chaps he should have a medal...
...delegates were still unable to agree on the relatively simple matter of setting a formal date for independence (Rhodesia technically is still a British colony). The black nationalists were demanding independence in twelve months; the whites insisted that 23 months were necessary. Both sides had rejected Chairman Ivor Richard's compromise proposal of a 15-month transition. Meanwhile, Smith had flown back to Salisbury on Nov. 3, declaring he could not afford to waste time sitting around Geneva "twiddling my thumbs." In what seemed a calculated insult to the blacks, he left negotiations for his government in the hands...
Dressed for the part, Ivor Richard, 44, Britain's Ambassador to the United Nations and currently chairman of the Rhodesian conference in Geneva, would make a splendidly old-fashioned John Bull. Burly, ebullient and pipe smoking, the bespectacled barrister is anything but timid-the description Nationalist Leader Joshua Nkomo applied to the British role in the negotiations. That much, at least, was made clear two days before the conference opened when Richard waded into what he called a "good verbal punch-up" with a member of an African nationalist delegation...
...glitter is going to rub off," he says. "If it goes badly, presumably a fair amount of odium will rub off. That's just a fact of life." To the extent that his future depends on his success at the Rhodesian conference, what is good for Ivor Richard may very well be good for Britain...