Carpio's Caper

UNITED NATIONS

For years, African nations in the General Assembly have demanded U.N. control over South West Africa, a bleak plateau (300,000 sq. mi.) that South Africa still clutches under an old League of Nations mandate. For years, South Africa has even refused to allow the U.N.'s South West Africa Committee into the area. Then, last spring, Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd suddenly invited Committee Chairman Victorio D. Carpio of the Philippines to come and have a look. As it turned out, he had picked his man well.

Before setting out on his inspection tour, Lawyer Carpio, the Philippines' longtime representative in the U.N., had bitterly denounced South Africa's oppressive, apartheid-based rule; he insisted that "decisive action is necessary in order to prevent an explosive situation from degenerating into racial war." But after he and Vice Chairman Salvador Martinez de Alva of Mexico had a carefully guided tour of South West Africa, Carpio was whistling a different tune. His report, issued in the odd form of a joint communique with Verwoerd, failed to mention apartheid or any threat to peace. Back in Manhattan, the full committee exploded in anger at its chairman, who was furiously backpedaling. He denied signing the joint communique, insisting that during the drafting he was ill, particularly ("I accuse no one") after a cup of morning coffee with Jolly Host Verwoerd.

In the meantime, having been appointed Philippine Ambassador to Cairo, Carpio last week blamed the communique on his Mexican fellow traveler, Martinez de Alva. Later he leaked a new report that completely reversed the first findings, called South Africa's rule of the territory a violation of "the enlightened conscience of mankind." Carpio's reversals simply played into Verwoerd's anti-U.N. hand.

Wrote the opposition Rand Daily Mail of Carpio's caper: "It has destroyed perhaps entirely the healthier relationship that was hesitatingly and gropingly established between the U.N. and South Africa."

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