Cubans Angola

President Reagan's decision to receive Jonas Savimbi, the Angola guerrilla leader, is a reckless concession to the radical right in the United States. It is a mistake in terms of Southern African policy, in that it aligns the United States with South Africa itself--the only other nation that has given aid and recognition to Savimbi's UNITA forces.

With an unprecedented half a dozen peace initiatives in progress at once, U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar says he's beginning to feel like a chess master playing 140 simultaneous matches. "I don't know how many I'll win," the 68-year-old Peruvian said with a wry smile during an interview in his office atop the U.N. headquarters tower. "I've only got two years, two months and 12 days left."

President Pieter W. Botha announced today that the 195-day-old state of emergency imposed to fight anti-apartheid turmoil in South Africa probably will be lifted on Friday. His announcement was praised by the United States and was given a cautious welcome from some South African liberals. But it provoked expressions of concern from the largest anti-apartheid grouping, the United Democratic Front, that the emergency would be supplanted by repressive legislation.

One of the most regrettable consequences of President Reagan's policy of "constructive engagement" with South Africa has been the way it has worked to delay independence for Namibia. Pretoria's continued defiance of the rule of law and international agreements reflects a confidence in South Africa that it can get away with it, that the worst that it has to fear is a "tut tut" from Washington.

Cuban President Fidel Castro on Tuesday accused the United States of defying the world by supporting anti-Marxist rebels in Nicaragua as tempers flared at the summit meeting of nations professing nonalignment. At one point, leaders of the 101-member movement listened in embarrassed silence while Iran demanded the expulsion of fellow member Iraq and accused its enemy of war crimes surpassing those of the Nazis.

After the frigid gusts of the Cold War, U.S.-Soviet relations are basking today in the political version of springtime. A number of conditions have to be met, however, if this warm spell is not to give way, as did detente in the 1970s, to a new chill. Nor should a temperate relationship be allowed to degenerate into a superpower condominium, which would produce the diplomatic equivalent of the greenhouse effect.

The last South African troops in Angola will withdraw across the border into Namibia by the end of this week, Foreign Minister Roelof F. (Pik) Botha announced Monday amid new moves on Namibian independence. Botha said the move is to show South Africa's good faith and revive negotiations on a major issue blocking Namibian independence--the departure of most of the 30,000 Cuban troops stationed in Angola.

Namibia will soon be given a broad measure of autonomy by South Africa, President Pieter W. Botha said Thursday, in a move certain to provoke new international controversy over long-delayed plans to grant independence to the remote desert territory.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz has named an outstanding citizen committee to offer advice in the coming year on U.S. policy regarding South Africa. "This is a serious undertaking, one that the President and I hope will lead to a bipartisan consensus that is a positive and necessary force behind any effective foreign policy," Shultz said. That commitment and the quality of the committee members were reassuring.

The Reagan Administration's gamble four years ago that it could link independence for Africa's last remaining colony to a withdrawal of more than 20,000 Cuban troops from the region is looking more and more like a bad bet, say critics of the policy. Once-confident Administration officials have stopped making predictions about when they will achieve independence for Namibia, although they maintain that they are still making progress.