Namibia Revolts

At least 14 people were killed Friday by a bomb blast at a crowded bank in northern Namibia in the deadliest attack of the 21-year-old guerrilla war in this South Africa-administered territory. Police blamed the attack in the town of Oshakati on guerrillas of the South-West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO), which is fighting for independence of the territory. But a SWAPO spokesman denied responsibility.

After 23 years of war and 20,000 fatalities, Namibians today will begin a five-day election to choose 72 representatives who will draft a constitution and guide the nation to independence from South Africa next year. The United Nations deployed 1,200 poll watchers in an effort to ensure a fair election. The South-West Africa People's Organization is expected to outpoll nine other parties in the vote.

Military representatives from South Africa, Cuba and Angola met at a border military camp and signed a treaty ending hostilities in the 13-year Angola civil war. A cease-fire went into effect Aug. 10, but the treaty, signed in the northern Namibian town of Ruacana, formally declared an end to the fighting. It is part of an overall agreement that calls for the withdrawal of South African troops from Angola by Sept.

South African allegations that Namibian guerrillas were illegally moving into northern Namibia from Angola were based on phony U.N. messages, a spokesman for the U.N. peacekeeping force in Namibia said. Pretoria had said the alleged incursions threatened to disrupt next week's elections that are a step toward independence from South Africa.

After 23 years of war and 20,000 fatalities, Namibians today will begin a five-day election to choose 72 representatives who will draft a constitution and guide the nation to independence from South Africa next year. The United Nations deployed 1,200 poll watchers in an effort to ensure a fair election. The South-West Africa People's Organization is expected to outpoll nine other parties in the vote.

Delegates from Angola, Cuba and South Africa said after their fifth round of U.S.-mediated negotiations Friday that they had agreed on "a sequence of steps to achieve peace in southwestern Africa." A brief joint communique at the end of the four-day session gave no details of the agreement and said it must be approved by the three governments. The statement said a summary of the negotiations would be issued Monday in the respective capitals.

South African-led forces in Namibia reported Tuesday that they killed 190 Namibian insurgents and Angolan troops in two major clashes in southern Angola. Diplomats here said the incidents could represent the start of a sharp escalation in the prolonged confrontation between Pretoria and Angola's Marxist government.

The South African government, proposing the first timetable for peace in southwestern Africa, called Tuesday for a cease-fire next week in Angola's 13-year-old civil war and offered to begin pulling out of Namibia on Nov. 1 and to allow free elections there by June. Foreign Minister Roelof (Pik) Botha, at a news conference in the capital of Pretoria, said the proposals were made in Geneva at the resumption of U.S.-mediated Angolan peace negotiations involving South Africa, Angola and Cuba.

The Reagan Administration's top policy-maker for southern Africa conceded Tuesday that the 13-year-old civil war inside Angola may continue despite the cease-fire agreement announced Monday. According to Assistant Secretary of State Chester A. Crocker, the cease-fire agreement covers only outside forces fighting in Angola, including South African and Cuban troops.

Sam Nujoma, the black nationalist leader of Namibia's guerrillas, returned home Thursday after 30 years in exile to the tumultuous welcome of thousands amid heightened fears that his life is in danger. Only two days after Nujoma's most senior white adviser was assassinated, apparently by right-wing extremists, Nujoma stepped down from a chartered Boeing 767 jet to lead his South-West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) in U.N.

Gunmen have attacked U.N. troops for the first time since they arrived to police Namibia's progress toward independence, and the United Nations on Friday condemned the assaults as terrorism. A commercial security guard was killed when unidentified gunmen threw grenades and fired guns from a vehicle at a U.N. post in the northern Namibian town of Outjo. A similar attack, in which no one was injured, was made on an Outjo military compound where Kenyan troops are billeted.

Namibian security forces fought guerrillas in the northern part of the territory for the sixth day as South Africa, Angola and Cuba planned emergency talks this weekend to try to salvage the U.N.-sponsored plan for Namibian independence from South Africa. Representatives of the three nations are to meet Saturday near Windhoek, the Namibian capital, along with American and Soviet observers.

Hundreds of armed guerrillas who infiltrated Namibia, touching off bloody fighting and threatening this African territory's hopes for independence, misunderstood the United Nations' peace process and thought they could return home with U.N. protection as victors of the war, South African officials and captured rebels said Monday.

Black Namibians like Gabriel Nekongo had seen their dreams of peace and freedom snuffed out again and again over a quarter-century of war on this sun-baked plain of sand and scrub trees. But never have their hopes been raised so high as this year. A curfew was lifted. Bunkered South African army bases were being dismantled, strip by metal strip. The night air, so long filled with the echoes of gunfire and fear, was quiet. And U.N. peacekeeping troops had appeared on the streets.

Bloody battles between rebels and police that have imperiled the fragile U.N. framework for Namibian independence continued for a second day Sunday as the death toll rose to at least 126 and the authorities searched the northern bush for 400 to 600 more insurgents. The South African administrator general, who controls the territory's U.N.-monitored transition to nationhood, halted the demobilization of Namibia's army and reactivated two units to help the police control the guerrilla invasion.

South Africa threatened Saturday to expel a large U.N. peacekeeping force on its first day of work in Namibia after charging that guerrillas entering from Angola had clashed with Namibian police as a formal cease-fire went into effect, leaving 38 insurgents and two police officers dead. Roelof F. (Pik) Botha, South Africa's foreign minister, called the clash a "flagrant violation" of international agreements. He said that if the U.N.

Angola, Cuba and South Africa agreed to extend U.S.-mediated peace talks at least one more day as delegates to the latest round of negotiations expressed optimism that an accord is near. U.S. mediator Chester A. Crocker, who persuaded the three nations to stay a fourth day in Geneva, has been working for seven months to achieve a timetable for the withdrawal of an estimated 50,000 Cuban troops from Angola in return for independence in South African-ruled Namibia (South-West Africa).