Three Soldier Peacemakers

Retired Indian General Prem Chand flew from New York City to Lusaka, Zambia, last week as the special representative of United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim. His mission: to arrange a U.N. peace-keeping force that would help maintain security in Rhodesia, if and when there is a cease-fire in the five-year-old guerrilla war.

In London, retired Field Marshal Sir Richard Michael Power Carver, Britain's newly appointed proconsul for Rhodesia, prepared to fly to Salisbury this week. His mission: to secure, if possible, an actual cease-fire agreement, which is the first step in a British-American peace plan that calls for new elections and transition to rule by the country's black majority.

Both soldiers will surely meet with Prime Minister Ian Smith, who last week told his countrymen, "I cannot see this [British-American] initiative succeeding."

Expectations are that the two generals will quickly confer with a third, General Peter Walls, commander of Rhodesia's 45,000-man security forces. Rhodesia's whites generally accept majority rule as inevitable, but they oppose dismantling the white-led military and police. The cease-fire plan, however, calls for a merger of Walls' forces with guerrillas who owe allegiance to Black Nationalists Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo. Thus prospects for an early peace in Rhodesia depend heavily on negotiations about security that involve three widely respected but relatively unknown soldiers. Brief profiles of the three:

"Mike Carver was the outstanding British soldier of his generation," says Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer

Denis Healey, who warmly backed his appointment to the new post. Carver, 62, whose great-great-great-granduncle was the Duke of Wellington, became a brigadier general at 29; when he retired from a 41-year career in the military last year, he was the chief of Britain's defense staff.

Blunt and aristocratic, Carver regards himself as "an apolitical general," but he has strong views on Rhodesia. Before flying to Salisbury, he responded sharply to criticism Smith has leveled at Carver's advocacy of majority rule. Said Carver: "If [Smith] doesn't understand that the whole exercise of the Anglo-American plan is to bring about majority rule on the basis of one-man one-vote at the earliest moment, the sooner he damn well understands it, the better." Carver is convinced that the current peace proposals are "the last chance for a just and peaceful settlement in Rhodesia."

In India, his military career was spent in staff and intelligence posts. Abroad, Prem Chand, 61, has served the U.N. in a variety of delicate missions. He was the U.N. troop commander in Katanga province in the Congo (now Zaire) in 1962 and also the commander of observer forces in Cyprus from 1970 until 1976--a post in which he worked closely with Carver.

Chand looks less like a general than an international civil servant. Says an Indian comrade: "He is softspoken, his hair is slicked down, and you will never catch him with a button out of line in his dress. He has the knack of getting on with anyone, any time, anywhere." A stickler for detail, Chand is praised by military colleagues for his concern about troop morale. That particular gift will serve him well if a Rhodesian cease-fire takes effect. Chand's job will then be to assemble and lead a multinational peace-keeping force to keep order during the six-month transition to majority rule. Says one U.N. official: "Waldheim never considered anyone else for the job. It was Prem, period."

Rhodesia's security forces have killed more than 3,000 guerrillas since the guerrilla war began and suffered only 365 losses of their own. The efficiency of the country's undermanned, underequipped army is a tribute to Walls, a native of Rhodesia who left Africa at the age of 14 to attend Britain's Sandhurst Military Academy. At 24 he was a major in Rhodesian forces combating insurgency in Malaya. The earthy and avuncular general officially retired as army commander earlier this year. Smith then appointed him as the country's first chief of a unified command --including army, air force and police. "We not only respect him, we also like him," says a senior officer. While head of the army, Walls introduced a number of black officers with full command over white troops.

Walls' main fear is that a U.N.-su-pervised force in Rhodesia would be hamstrung by the threat of Soviet vetoes. "With the political developments taking place," he says, "there is an atmosphere, a changing scenario in which if a chap in my position speaks out and takes a definite stance or states a preference for a policy, it removes his flexibility." Walls is respected as fair even by many black nationalists. Some U.S. and British diplomats hope that the Patriotic Front would accept Walls as head of a new army for a united Zimbabwe.

"While you are fighting," says Walls, "you fight hard going right to the ceasefire stage. But I am not against any negotiated settlement or any political development. I claim to be nonpolitical, which I reckon I am." -

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.