De Klerk May Unveil Plan for Talks With Blacks

President Frederik W. de Klerk, under growing worldwide pressure to free jailed nationalist Nelson R. Mandela and take concrete steps toward removing apartheid, opens South Africa’s Parliament today with the most important speech of his short presidency.

As De Klerk finished writing that speech Thursday night, the president’s office denied reports that he and Mandela had met earlier in the day or that the two planned any more meetings before the opening of Parliament. De Klerk and Mandela met for the first time in December.

International political and business leaders have high expectations for the speech, in which De Klerk will announce the beginning of his legislative program to create a climate for negotiations with the black majority.

The government has fueled expectations by suggesting that Mandela’s release is imminent and opening up the once-closely guarded gates of the country by granting visas to scores of foreign journalists. The number of foreign reporters in the country has tripled to more than 300 in recent days.

Newspapers with usually reliable sources in the government have said that De Klerk, 53, may lift some state of emergency regulations that restrict the media and have closed down some anti-apartheid organizations. De Klerk, who as leader of the ruling National Party was elected president in September, has said he envisions a “new South Africa” in which whites and blacks share power.

One of the most urgent questions facing De Klerk, though, is when to release Mandela, the 71-year-old leader of the outlawed African National Congress. Mandela’s freedom has been demanded by virtually every legitimate black leader in the country as a condition for negotiations with the white minority-led government. The government has said that Mandela’s release is now only a matter of when and under what circumstances.

Close associates of Mandela told The Times this week that he has set no conditions for his release. “Open the door and watch me,” Mandela told one of his visitors.

Mandela has served more than 27 years of a life prison term for sabotage.

But political analysts say the government, which has held numerous meeting with Mandela in recent years, sees the black nationalist as a reasonable man with whom they can one day negotiate. Those analysts say De Klerk realizes that he cannot release Mandela without allowing him to operate politically by dismantling the 3 1/2-year-old emergency and lifting the 30-year-old ban on Mandela’s African National Congress.

“They want him to be a facilitator, and they see him as a man who will influence the ANC to move away from violence and get the ANC to be more open-minded,” says Willem de Klerk, a liberal political analyst and older brother of the president. “But they know they can’t release him into a political vacuum.”