 The affair came amid the larger dispute between Whitehall and Salisbury regarding the terms under which Rhodesia could be granted sovereign independence. Rhodesia's mostly white government insisted that statehood should come under the constitution introduced with Britain's approval in 1961, while Whitehall insisted that a set timetable for the introduction of black majority rule would have to be in place before the country could be fully independent. The Rhodesian government's stance on this matter caused it to become isolated within the Commonwealth, which from 1964 excluded it from most of its internal bodies, while the Rhodesian military became unofficially embargoed by its established British and American suppliers.
