U.S., S. Africa Hold Talks on Violence : McFarlane, Top Pretoria Envoy Meet in Vienna

A high-level U.S. delegation led by White House national security adviser Robert C. McFarlane met in Vienna on Thursday with South African Foreign Minister Roelof F. (Pik) Botha to discuss South Africa’s escalating violence.

Plans for the meeting had been a closely held secret, although the State Department and the White House confirmed that it had occurred a few hours after the talks ended. The department said that there will be an additional meeting today, also in Vienna.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Larry Speakes and State Department spokesman Bernard Kalb read identical statements: “This meeting was at the request of the South African government. We agreed to the meeting because of the importance of our having direct contact with the South African government at this tense time.

Opportunity for Discussion

“The meeting afforded us an opportunity to discuss the serious situation inside South Africa and in the region, a situation about which the Administration has strong views,” they said.

A senior White House official made it clear that McFarlane told Botha that the United States demands reforms in Pretoria’s racial policies, which have not only generated increasing international criticism of South Africa but also have embarrassed the Administration at home, where growing grass-roots opinion favors a tougher U.S. policy.

“I think we explained to them our concern about the situation there--the international implications and the domestic implications here,” the official said. “I’ll leave it at that.”

Asked to summarize U.S. policy toward South Africa, Kalb said Thursday, “The United States called for an end to the violence, the restoration of law and order, the lifting of the state of emergency and the resumption of black-white dialogue.”

The meeting took place at the U.S. Embassy in the Austrian capital. In addition to McFarlane, the U.S. delegation included Chester A. Crocker, assistant secretary of state for Africa, and Herman W. Nickel, the U.S. ambassador to South Africa, who was recalled for “consultations” in June to protest South African military raids into Angola and Botswana. Crocker is considered the primary author of the Administration’s policy of “constructive engagement,” or quiet diplomacy, toward Pretoria.

News agency reports from Vienna quoted Botha as saying that the talks were the first in a series of meetings with officials of Western governments at which he plans to explain the reasons for his government’s 19-day-old state of emergency. Reports from London said that an official from the British Foreign Office also met Botha in Vienna.

1,400 Arrests

More than 1,400 people--mostly black political activists--have been arrested under the emergency decree, which established virtual martial law in 36 magisterial districts embracing more than 60 black townships, and several dozen people have been killed in ensuing protest demonstrations and riots.

According to Reuters news agency, Botha said, when asked about the substance of the talks: “I am not in a position to comment on that. You were not supposed to know I was here.”

McFarlane flew to Vienna after a National Security Council meeting in Washington on Wednesday that was thought to have focused on South Africa and on ways the United States could show its opposition to the state of emergency without abandoning constructive engagement. The council meeting lasted for more than twice its scheduled 30 minutes.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz, a council member, and McFarlane, head of the council’s staff, are known to have urged a tougher line toward South Africa’s white minority government. But in a mini-news conference earlier this week, President Reagan defended Pretoria’s state of emergency as “a governmental reaction to some violence.”

Radio Commentary

South Africa’s state-run radio later broadcast a commentary that said Reagan’s remark broke what had been unanimous condemnation of Pretoria by Western political leaders. The radio, which reflects government opinion, said that Reagan was South Africa’s “most dependable ally in the West.”

The South African commentary was embarrassing to U.S. officials, who had hoped to convince both Pretoria and the American public that the Administration is actively opposed to the state of emergency and to apartheid, South Africa’s system of strict racial segregation. This feeling prevails in Washington despite the President’s reluctance to impose economic sanctions.

At the White House, Speakes said that Reagan decided to send McFarlane to Vienna instead of Shultz because “McFarlane can travel with more confidentiality than the secretary of state.”

Speakes stressed that there is no change in the U.S. policy of constructive engagement.