ONSLOW: My next point picks up on your comment about monitoring, which was another huge challenge to the successful achievement of Zimbabwean independence. The Commonwealth contributed 1,200 troops. Was that also part of your input? RAMPHAL: Yes. The British Government were operating directly with Commonwealth Governments, but Commonwealth Governments were not interacting with me. The British Government were asking us for that. How did that fit into the play? Yet they were keeping their distance from us, which was just as well. Had we been hand in glove with the British Government, it would have undermined our own position. It was very delicate. It was during that kind of interaction—when Peter Carrington was growing daily more restive with Sonny Ramphal’s intervention, getting in the way and so on—the question was being agitated of my being a candidate for Secretary-General of the UN. Some member of the press—I forget who it was—asked Carrington at a press conference if Britain would support that. Peter Carrington is reported to have said that he would personally swim the Atlantic to cast a veto, all of which enhanced my credentials as a lawyer. ONSLOW: Very much so, but what a wonderfully irascible comment delivered with style. Did you have formal, regular meetings with Peter Carrington on a very frequent basis, or as and when the need arose? RAMPHAL: Not through Lancaster House. Not ever, but certainly as and when the need arose. ONSLOW: I was just wondering to what extent Peter Carrington also set into place the conduit for contact between Britain and the Commonwealth secretariat. RAMPHAL: No. The Government did not like that at all. ONSLOW: Fine. I am just trying to see where Tony Duff was situated in it. RAMPHAL: Tony Duff was the interlocutor. After all, he was the bureaucrat and understood the necessity for a continuing link with the secretariat and with me. That would suit Peter Carrington much better. Our relations were always good, but the British Government did not want us to be involved at all in their show, not just on principle and because of pride, but because they knew that they were going to get themselves into situations in which they wanted a totally free hand. All that business about the Commonwealth superintending and supervising the elections—they wanted none of it. We ended up observing the elections. You asked whether I saw Peter Carrington very often. I did not see him during Lancaster House meetings, because that would have given me too much legitimacy in his eyes. But when it was all over, or nearly all over—the election date was fixed, Lord Soames was out there, and I think that Tony Duff was there with him—
239