ZAMBIAN MINISTER CONFIRMS COPPER DIVERSION

  Minister of Mines Patrick Chitambala
  confirmed that Zambia had ended copper shipments through South
  Africa and announced that its state-run mining company had
  closed down its liaison office in the white-ruled republic.
      He told the official Times of Zambia newspaper in an
  interview the government was diverting all mineral exports
  along rail routes to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and Beira in
  Mozambique. Chitambala declined to say what volume of copper
  and other minerals were being shipped through these two ports,
  but he said there had not been any problem with the new
  arrangements.
      "So far our copper has been reaching its destinations
  without hindrance," he told the Times.
      The Times of Zambia quoted unnamed sources as saying Zambia
  exported 100,000 tonnes of copper through Dar es Salaam and
  17,000 through Beira in the last quarter of 1986. Diplomatic
  sources in Lusaka had earlier expressed doubts over Zambia's
  ability to ship all its copper through Beira and Dar es Salaam
  without causing massive bottlenecks at the ports.
      Chitambala also said that the state-run Zambia Consolidated
  Copper Mines (ZCCM) had closed its liaison office in
  Johannesburg, since it was now redundant.
  

