Urgent appeals made for mandatory sanctions against South Africa; Assembly adopts 13 texts on apartheid, Namibia.

• Position: UN General Assembly - Includes related articles

Urgent appeals made for mandatory sanctions against South Africa

Assembly adopts 13 texts on apartheid, Namibia

Urgent appeals to the Security Council to impose comprehensive mandatory sanctions against South Africa have been made again by the General Assembly following separate debates in the plenary on two related items - South Africa's policy of apartheid (16-20 November) and the question of Namibia (4-6 November).

Five resolutions were adopted on 6 November concerning Namibia, including an 85-paragraph omnibus text. Eight more texts relating to apartheid were approved on 20 November, touching on such subjects as collaboration by certain States with South Africa; the situation of the front-line States; and support for national liberation movements. Other topics related to a mandatory oil embargo against South Africa, application of strictly monitored measures against Pretoria, implementation of the United Nations plan for Namibian independence, political prisoners, and the work of the United Nations Council for Namibia -- the legal Administering Authority for the Territory.

The United States said it continued to use carefully targeted political, diplomatic and economic pressures to achieve a peaceful transition in South Africa. International efforts to ravage the South African economy were not a solution to apartheid. World-wide sanctions simply did not work.

In explaining its vote against sanctions, the United Kingdom said the most effective way to help South Africans to dismantle apartheid was not to impose punitive economic and other measures in an attempt to isolate the country.

World-wide sense of urgency . . .

In its report (A/42/22) to the Assembly, the Special Committee against Apartheid said there was a world-wide sense of urgency to replace the apartheid system by a democratic and non-racial order in an unfragmented South Africa, without further bloodshed. The situation in and around South Africa had deteriorated rapdily because of the policy of apartheid and South Africa's mounting reign of domestic terror, as well as its acts of aggression and destabilization against regional countries. Pretoria had also recently imposed Draconian measures on the media.

Enforceable and strictly monitored sanctions would help create conditions necessary for a peaceful, just and lasting solution to the conflict in South Africa. South Africa's dependence on foreign technology, loans and trade was critical to considering further measures against...