URGENT MEETING ON NAMIBIA SET

April 7, 1989

Representatives of the United States, Soviet Union, South Africa, Angola and Cuba are slated to hold an urgent meeting on Namibia tomorrow. They will be trying to preserve the regional peace agreement in the face of what US and South African officials say are flagrant violations of international commitments by the South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO). The agreement calls for Namibian independence.

The US this week issued a two-page legal analysis detailing SWAPO's violations of its commitments to the United Nations, which is overseeing the independence process. US officials say SWAPO planned the incursions into Namibia, which resulted in the highest level of fighting ever there.

Up to 1,200 armed guerrillas infiltrated over the last week, they say, and several thousand more were on their way in when the fighting escalated. ``South Africa was not the villain for once,'' a senior US official says. ``This is really coming down to whether the front-line states and others are going to choose solidarity with SWAPO or the independence of Namibia ... South African patience is really wearing thin.''

Cuba and Angola are also held partly to blame. They committed to keep SWAPO forces far north of the Namibian border as part of the US-mediated peace accord signed in December. They were asked to move those forces north at the last two meetings of the joint commission established to monitor the accords.

If SWAPO were to get away with this, says a second US official, it assures South Africa will see itself fully justified ``in doing a number'' on any future SWAPO government.