Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir left on an official visit to Zaire today. He said he hoped the recent renewal of diplomatic ties between Israel and that central African nation “will influence and encourage other African countries to resume formal and official relations with us.”
Zaire and Israel resumed diplomatic relations six months ago. They had been broken by Zaire during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Shamir is scheduled to spend two days in Kinshasha, Zaire’s capital, for meetings with President Mobutu Sese Seko and other officials. He is accompanied by a large party of Israeli industrialists and businessmen interested in commercial and investment projects and by Gen. Avraham Tamir, head of the strategic planning branch of the Israel army’s General Headquarters who visited Zaire earlier this year.
Tamir will present Mobutu with an overall strategic plan drawn up by Israeli experts, which the Zaire leader requested for his country. Shamir expects to sign mutual cooperation and economic agreements during his stay in Kinshasha. Before leaving, he told reporters at the airport that “African countries want to be independent and are ready to resist (Arab) pressures.”
Shamir said in their view such pressures are “a new colonialism because it is not in Africa’s interest not to have relations with Israel. On the contrary, it is in their interests to have relations and to cooperate with our country.” In addition to Zaire, Israel presently has diplomatic relations with only three other Black African nations — Malawi, Lesotho and Swaziland.
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