1.
SV & CU Mr. Nkomo speaking to reporter, Peter Whittle (2 shots)
1.42


NKOMO: "We've never...never had thousands of young people coming all at once. It has been a question of recruiting and so on and so forth. There's no question of recruiting now...now people have decided just to walk across the borders to look for any place where they can get a gun. Young people, as young as five years, I've been confronted by young people -- as many as 1,000 -- young people, five year old. And normally, we say chaps, we will give you some schooling, and they say, well we left school in Rhodesia because the situation is intolerable -- please give us a gun. This is the position e have arrived at in Rhodesia today. Very serious and very sad.



WHITTLE: "What obstacles are there now to the reconvening of a new conference on Zimbabwe?"



NKOMO: "What obstacles we had when we met in Geneva. We discovered that while we talked about meaningful control of power from a non-minority majority, the British were talking about the sharing of power with Smith doing the sharing and saying oh well, you chaps are talking of Smith surrendering to you. We've....never asked Smith to surrender to us. We have said you exercise illegal power, you must surrender it to the people and he is part of the people -- the minority that are exercising illegitimate power -- are part of the majority to whom we want to see power transferred to. So, no one loses here."




Initials BB/0120



Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved

Background: The Rhodesian Patriotic Front leader, Mr. Joshua Nkomo, has said that conditions have not changed enough to warrant the reconvening of the Geneva peace conference on south west Africa. He was speaking in London on Friday (6 May) where he had had talks with British Foreign Secretary, Dr. David Owen. After the meeting he talked with Peter Whittle of Visnews, about the current situation in Rhodesia.

Mr. Nkomo said the United States had withdrawn its offer to co-sponsor a new Geneva conference. He said the United States Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, had told him that the United States would offer to assist Britain in other ways to reach a settlement, but he did not say what this would entail. Mr. Nkomo met Mr. Vance in London on the same day.