
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, July 5, 1990                   TAG: 9007050191
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

FOR AFRICA, BUSH ABHORS VIOLENCE; FOR PANAMA, OK

IT IS indeed regrettable that Nelson Mandela would not rule out the possibility that the African National Congress might resort to violence. Of course President Bush wanted Mandela to promise a "kinder, gentler" method of dealing with burning issues, just as Bush had promised his own constituency within recent memory. But doesn't it seem almost sacrilegious for Bush to suggest, as he did on June 25 when Mandela visited the White House, that Mandela should emulate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.?

Perhaps the appeal would have been more persuasive if Vaclav Havel or Lech Walesa had been the spokesperson - neither of them had ordered a military invasion, under cover of night, of a sovereign nation with which "diplomatic" relations still existed.

Of course, the situations are not really comparable. Bush was willing to inflict thousands of civilian casualties just to "get" one former accomplice who had become insolent and refractory instead of continuing to go along with Uncle Sam's plans for Central America.

On the other hand, Mandela and the ANC seek suffrage and justice for millions of his fellow blacks in their own native land. Is Bush, but not Mandela, exonerated by the pretext that the end justifies the means?

WHITFIELD COBB\ BLACKSBURG

by CNB