Rhodesian resolution amounted to a vote of confidence in a mission led by the British
Lord Pearce on the Rhodesian question, a mission which many African states opposed.
At a press conference in Addis Ababa, African journalists destabilized Bush with
aggressive questions about the US policy of ignoring mandatory UN economic sanctions
against the racist, white supremacist Ian Smith regime in Rhodesia. The Security Council
had imposed the mandatory sanctions, but later the US Congrsss had passed, and Nixon
had signed into law, legislation incorporating the so-called Byrd amendment, which
allowed the US president to import chrome from Rhodesia in the event of shortages of
that strategic raw material. Chrome was readily available on the world market, especially
from the USSR, although the Soviet chrome was more expensive than the Rhodesian
chrome. In his Congressional testimony, Bush whined at length about the extensive
criticism of this declared US policy of breaching the Rhodesian sanctions on the part of
"those who are just using this to really hammer us from a propaganda standpoint." "We
have taken the rap on this thing," complained Bush. "We have taken the heat on it." "We
have taken a great deal of abuse from those who wanted to embarrass us in Africa, to
emphasize the negative and not the positive in the United Nations." Bush talked of his
own efforts at damage control on the issue of US support for the racist Rhodesian regime:
"...what we are trying to do is to restrict any hypocrisy we are accused of." "I certainly
don't think the US position should be that the Congress was trying to further colonialism
and racism in this action it took," Bush told the Congressmen. "In the UN, I get the
feeling we are categorized as imperialists and colonialists, and I make clear this is not
what America stands for, but nevertheless it is repeated over and over and over again," he
whined. [fn 28]
During the hearings, Bush was confronted by Congressman Diggs with an account
published in the Los Angeles Times of February 26, 1972, according to which the US had
threatened to use the veto against a draft resolution stating that all sanctions against
Rhodesia should remain fully in force until the people of Rhodesia had freely and equally
exercised their right to self-determination. Rep. Diggs referred to a report in this article
that the African and third world sponsors of this resolution had been forced to water it
down in order to avoid a veto to be cast by Bush. Bush ducked any direct answer on this
behind-the-scenes veto threat. "...we simply cannot, given the restrictions placed on us by
law, appear to be two-faced on these things," Bush told Diggs.
Some weeks later, Bush gave a lecture to students at Tulane University in New Orleans,
where he announced that the US was now using the provisions of the Byrd amendment
actually to purchase Rhodesian chrome, and conceded that this was indeed a violation of
the UN economic sanctions. Noting that the policy was causing the Nixon regime
"considerable embarrassment," Bush nevertheless defended the chrome purchases, saying
that the US was acting "not in support of colonialism or totalitarianism but it seemed the
realistic solution," more desirable than paying "twice the price" for Russian chrome. Bush
lamely pointed out that many other countries were violating the sanctions covertly,
whereas the US was doing so overtly, which he suggested was less reprehensible. [fn 29]