S. Africa Leader Meets With Key Apartheid Foes

President Frederik W. de Klerk, in what he described as seminal “talks about talks,” met for three hours Wednesday with Anglican Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu and two other clerics, marking the first face-to-face discussion between a South African leader and key anti-apartheid figures over the issue of negotiations.

“I hope today’s meeting will be looked on as a milestone on the positive road ahead,” De Klerk told a news conference. But, he added, “We are not yet at the negotiating stage.”

In fact, the two sides did not resolve any of the central issues dividing the black majority from the white minority-led government. De Klerk declared himself open to negotiating voting rights for blacks, but the clergymen demanded more concrete promises and vowed to continue to press for more economic sanctions against Pretoria.

Tutu, the Rev. Allan Boesak, president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, and the Rev. Frank Chikane, general secretary of the South African Council of Churches, outlined six steps De Klerk must take to get negotiations off the ground.

They included removing restrictions on political activists and bans on political groups, freeing all political prisoners and those detained without trial, lifting the three-year-old state of emergency and reprieving those on Death Row.

“If these things happen we will be ready to say to our friends: ‘Put the sanctions program on hold, give these people a chance (because) they are serious,’ ” said Tutu during a separate news conference after the meeting. But the 1984 Nobel Peace laureate added that De Klerk’s response had “not been enough for us.”

“We made it clear we need results,” Chikane said. “Without results, we can’t have negotiations.” De Klerk’s “inaugural speech rhetoric,” he said, would have no effect on negotiations “as long as the majority of people are under chains.”

De Klerk said the clergymen had failed to recognize that “we are no longer arguing about the ‘if’ in South Africa. We agree that all South Africans must have a vote and that discrimination must end. What we must now start talking about is how we structure that new society.”

He also said that the meeting had shown him that “one of the biggest challenges we face is bridging this gap of mistrust” between anti-apartheid forces and his government. He said he urged the clerics to “to reevaluate their position and change their attitude” toward his reform plan.

The talks, requested by Tutu, came amid international praise for De Klerk’s announcement on Tuesday night that he would soon release eight longtime political prisoners, including Walter Sisulu, the second most powerful jailed black nationalist leader behind Nelson R. Mandela.

But in a move that signaled trouble for those releases, police fired tear gas to disperse about 200 students marching in a mixed-race township of Cape Town to celebrate the impending freedom of Oscar Mpetha, an 80-year-old member of the African National Congress.

About 4,000 people then gathered for a welcome rally in a sports field, where they sang, danced and waved banners of the ANC. Police cordoned off the field and temporarily detained a foreign TV crew and confiscated its videotape.

Mpetha, who has almost completed a five-year prison sentence for terrorism, suffers from diabetes and has been hospitalized in Cape Town since 1986.

Although De Klerk had promised to release the eight prisoners unconditionally, he left open the possibility Wednesday that they could be placed under restrictions if they pose a threat to public order.

“I really hope it will not be necessary,” De Klerk said. “We have taken this decision in a positive spirit, and the responsibility now rests with them.” About 400 activists currently are restricted from political activity and, in many cases, are under nighttime house arrest.

The government has said Sisulu and the others, several of whom have served 25 years of their life sentences, will be freed as soon as the necessary formalities are completed, perhaps in a matter of days.

Anti-apartheid leaders generally welcomed De Klerk’s decision to free their compatriots, but cautioned against over optimism and suggested it was a ploy by South Africa to ease international pressure for reform.

“What we are saying to the world is let’s not look at things like the release of a few prisoners--it’s only eight out of hundreds. This is just a drop in the ocean,” said Patrick Mafuna, an ANC spokesman in Harare, Zimbabwe.

Among those still in jail is Mandela, the 71-year-old black nationalist whom millions of blacks consider their true leader. Key black leaders in South Africa, including many moderates, have demanded Mandela’s release as a condition of entering into negotiations with the government. Mandela has said his release “is not an issue at this stage.”

The government told Mandela of its decision to release his colleagues before Tuesday night’s announcement, and he watched news of the releases on state-run television with several leading anti-apartheid activists, including Sisulu’s wife, Albertina.

The Conservative Party, the government’s chief opposition in the white-dominated Parliament, on Wednesday criticized the prisoner release, pointing out that Pretoria had dropped its long insistence that political prisoners renounce violence as a precondition of freedom.

“It does not bode well for South Africa’s independence if the release of ANC leaders is the price that must be paid for foreign good will,” said Andries Treurnicht, Conservative Party leader.