Botha Asks U.S., Allies to Help S. Africa Peace

President Pieter W. Botha has asked President Reagan and other Western leaders for help in ending South Africa’s continuing political violence and in promoting a peaceful resolution of its problems, state-run Radio South Africa reported Sunday.

Botha, who is trying to open a personal dialogue with South Africa’s black majority on the nation’s political future, reportedly asked the leaders of the seven major industrialized democracies attending next week’s economic summit in Venice to put pressure on the outlawed African National Congress to halt its guerrilla attacks and to accept negotiations as the means of settling the country’s conflicts.

Few if any black leaders are willing to take part in talks with Botha unless they have the ANC’s blessing. Western diplomats who have read Botha’s letter say that he apparently is trying increase international pressure on the ANC to accept, or at least not oppose, an informal, preliminary dialogue that he hopes will lead to broader talks later.

Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Zulu leader Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi both said last week that the white-led minority government must meet several conditions, including the lifting of the year-old state of emergency and the freeing of Nelson Mandela and other imprisoned ANC leaders, before they could accept Botha’s invitation to talk.

Urged to Cut Any Ties

Pro-government newspapers, however, portrayed Botha’s letters to Reagan and allied Western leaders as a South African bid to isolate the African National Congress, calling on foreign governments to regard the ANC as a terrorist group and to break all relations their countries may have with the 75-year-old organization.

The newspapers said that Botha, in his letters, also points to the mandate his National Party won in last month’s whites-only parliamentary elections to continue its tough measures to curb civil unrest but also to pursue its step-by-step political reforms aimed at negotiating a new “power-sharing” constitution that will bring the black majority into the national government.

And he complains, according to press accounts of the letters, that South Africa’s international critics have not given his government credit for the political, economic and social reforms carried out so far, or recognized its commitment to end apartheid. Instead, he says, the West has made excessive demands for faster change.

The significance of Botha’s letters was difficult to determine because of the reluctance of government officials to discuss anything that the 71-year-old president does. Neither the spokesman for his own office nor that for the Foreign Ministry felt free to elaborate on the information released by the state-controlled media here.

Wrote 2 Earlier Letters

Botha, who traveled to Western Europe three years ago but has been unable to meet world leaders since, has written similar letters twice in the past two years as a response to the mounting international pressure on South Africa to move toward majority rule. He has received only delayed, largely noncommittal responses to those letters.

To most Western diplomats who have read the letters, Botha seems to be acknowledging the substantial impact of international political and economic sanctions on the country and to be admitting that his government, despite its “South Africa first” bravado, cannot and does not want to go it alone.

In addition to the United States, the countries participating in the Venice summit are Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Japan and West Germany.

Helmut Schaefer of the West German Foreign Ministry said during a visit last week to neighboring Lesotho that Bonn is interested in promoting a dialogue between the Pretoria government and the African National Congress. He said that the Bundestag, West Germany’s Parliament, will invite representatives of both to talks in Bonn in October to see what the basis for full negotiations might be.

Prime Minister Brian Mulroney of Canada said last month that he would propose international mediation of the conflict here by a special commission similar to the Commonwealth’s Eminent Persons Group, which brought Pretoria and the ANC to serious consideration of negotiations before each backed off.

Rejects Raid Criticism

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Roelof F. (Pik) Botha of South Africa has rejected U.S. criticism of commando raids Friday on the Mozambican capital of Maputo, accusing Washington of having a double standard on terrorism.

While not acknowledging South African responsibility for the attack, which left three Mozambicans dead, Foreign Minister Botha said that Mozambique had been “repeatedly warned” about harboring ANC insurgents and that it had been unwilling to discuss security questions with Pretoria.

“In the case of bomb explosions in South Africa, the U.S. government has been reluctant to react,” he told the state-run news media.