LISBON, Portugal -- Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, defending the imposition of sanctions against South Africa, arrived in Angola for a private seven-day visit and talks with leaders of the Marxist government, the official Angolan news agency reported today.
The former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations arrived in Luanda on Wednesday at the government's invitation and was to meet separately today with the ministers of foreign affairs, foreign trade and the interior, the ANGOP agency said.
'I have come to get to know Angola better and to gain understanding of Angola and the SADCC,' the ANGOP report received in Lisbon quoted Young on his arrival in the former Portugese colony.
SADCC, the Southern African Development Coordinating Conference, is a 9-nation group that seeks to limit regional economic dependence on South Africa by coordinating development policies.
According to an ANGOP paraphrase, Young said 'The imposition of global economic sanctions on South Africa would contribute greatly to establishing a peaceful climate in southern Africa.'
He 'categorically rejected' the U.S. and South African position that independence from South African administraion for neighboring Namibia, also known as South-West Africa, should be linked to the withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola, the agency said.
Washington, which has no diplomatic relations with Luanda, has tried for five years to broker a regional settlement linking a withdrawal of South African forces from Namibia to a gradual exit of the 35,000-man Cuban force in Angola.
Angola abandoned the off-on negotiations last year after the Reagan administration began a reapprochement with Jonas Savimbi's Angolan UNITA insurgents, who started receiving U.S. arms last spring.
On Wednesday, Young visited the tomb of Angola's first president, Agostinho Neto, and dined with members of the government, ANGOP said.
Young will also visit the oil-producing Cabinda enclave operated by the U.S. company Chevron and will tour three southern provinces where there are frequent South African incursions and fighting between Angolan troops and UNITA.
