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.