SINGAPORE: Pakistan last night [Jan 14] welcomed the “Declaration of Principles” tabled by Zambia at the afternoon session of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Conference yesterday.

Commenting on the Africa-sponsored proposal presented by President Kenneth Kaunda in a 2000-word paper, a Foreign Office spokesman told [an agency]: The proposed declaration is under study to determine the content and form in which it would best serve the purpose for which it is intended. … In its references to racialism, the document said: “We recognise racial discrimination as an unmitigated evil of society and racial prejudice as a dangerous sickness threatening the healthy development of the human race. We, therefore, seek every means of combating these evils; we shall deny all regimes which practise them any assistance which could consolidate or strengthen them.”

Zambia and other African Governments maintain that Britain would be supporting apartheid if she supplied arms to South Africa.

[Meanwhile, according to an agency,] Pakistan told the 31-member Commonwealth Conference today that the Peoples Republic of China has no expansionist designs and that this country of seven hundred million people should be seated at the United Nations.

Published in Dawn, January 16th, 2021