Coretta King Stands Up President Botha : Apartheid Foes Pressure Her to Cancel Session She Requested

Coretta Scott King, widow of slain American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., today failed to show up for a controversial meeting she had requested with President Pieter W. Botha.

Botha was kept waiting for 10 minutes before black American businessman Robert Browne arrived at his Cape Town office to tell his staff that the meeting was off.

Botha’s aides were first visibly confused and then clearly angry when it emerged that King had decided to stand the president up.

King had been under pressure from black dissidents to cancel the meeting. Botha called her action “a sad reflection on those who find themselves in a make-believe world of political fraud and who are unable or unwilling to have their action exposed to the harsh light of reality.”

But Allan Boesak, black South African president of the Geneva-based World Alliance of Reformed Churches and a foe of apartheid, said, “We want her to state clearly that she is on our side.”

King was to have met Botha at noon but at 12:30 p.m. issued a statement saying, “I now feel I need more time to acquire a better understanding of the complex problems here before meeting with President P. W. Botha.”

Black dissident leaders including Winnie Mandela, wife of jailed African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, had threatened not to see King if she insisted on seeing Botha.

King came to South Africa for Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s enthronement Sunday as Anglican church leader, but said she also was on a fact-finding mission for President Reagan.

U.S. Information Service spokesman Samir Koutab denied her claim, saying in Cape Town, “Mrs. King’s statement that she is in South Africa on a mission for the U.S. government is a misconception.

“She is here purely in her private capacity and has not been given a mandate or mission by the U.S. government,” he said.

Earlier, three black African National Congress rebels were hanged for two attacks that killed six people, officials said. The hangings occurred despite strong condemnation in South Africa and other African states that they would “aggravate” unrest.

A spokeswoman for the government Bureau for Information said Andrew Zondo, 19, Sipho Xulu, 25, and Lucky Payi, 20, were executed at 7 a.m. by hanging in Pretoria Central Prison.