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CU Mr. Joshua Nkomo speaking in English.
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MR. NKOMO: "Well, first, you, the British said that Smith is an illegal regime. And I do not see an arrangement that could be made by Smith and anybody without the British. You know, Smith has been attacking neighbouring territories. Last week he attacked and killed in Botswana. And if this is so, he is attacking Zambia. And this is a man who is supposed to be a man of peace; a man who has arrived to some agreement; and there he is conducting aggression against neighbouring territories launching these attacks on Zambia, and killing Zambians. If he was attacking guerrilla fighters, guerrilla fighters are in Zimbabwe. He doesn't have to go to Zambia to attack Zambians.



According to the report from Zambia, it is that he has attacked the Zambians....the Zambian army. I have said several times that we fight our own wars. We do not ask other people to fight our wars, so we are fighting our own wars....no Cubans, no Soviets. The Zimbabweans. And I think you know it. Everyone knows it. What we have done, we have sought arms from where we can get them. We have sought them from the West, and we have sought them from the East. We failed to get them from the West."




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Background: In Rhodesia, the military command confirmed on Tuesday (7 March) that their forces had launched a major air and ground attack across the border into Zambia. The communique said the attack was designed to forestall a large-scale guerrilla incursion into Rhodesia. The Zambian Government said that attack was "unprovoked and indiscriminate". The Rhodesian Patriotic Front leader, Mr. Joshua Nkomo, whose ZAPU guerrillas are believed to have been the target of the Rhodesian raid, is at the United Nations in New York for the Security Council debate on Rhodesia. In an interview for the British Broadcasting Corporation, he was asked for his reaction: