S. Africa Seeks ANC’s Cooperation in Return for Promised Reforms : Apartheid: A leader of the rebel group says it won’t negotiate. ‘Nothing fundamentally has changed,’ he says.

The South African government’s negotiations chief said Tuesday that he is looking for a more “cooperative attitude” from the African National Congress now that President Frederik W. de Klerk has, at great political risk, freed the guerrilla group to operate openly inside South Africa.

“I think it is only fair that in answer to the considerable strides the state president has taken, some steps should at least be taken on the other side to lessen the gap between the two parties,” said Gerrit Viljoen, De Klerk’s minister of constitutional development.

But, as Viljoen spoke in Cape Town, ANC leader Walter Sisulu arrived in Johannesburg after consultations with the ANC executive committee in Europe and told reporters that the ANC has no plans to open negotiations.

“There is no question yet of direct discussions with the government,” the 77-year-old Sisulu said. “Nothing fundamentally has changed.”

The public sparring indicated the deep divisions, fostered by decades of animosity and mistrust, that must be overcome by the government and the ANC before the two leading forces in South African politics can sit down at a negotiating table and begin discussing a new constitution.

Hopes for breaking the logjam rest largely with jailed nationalist Nelson R. Mandela, the most widely respected black leader in the country.

The white minority-led government believes that a free Mandela will be able to persuade the ANC to begin negotiations on power-sharing with the government, and it wants to grant his wishes, insofar as it is able, to avoid later public confrontations with Mandela that could scuttle the peace process.

Viljoen, a silver-haired former classics professor who has met Mandela dozens of times in prison, said Tuesday that the 71-year-old ANC member serving a life term for sabotage is “a leader of stature . . . who will make a very important contribution toward starting negotiations.”

But the Rev. Allan Boesak, who met Mandela on Tuesday, said that while the black leader called De Klerk’s speech “bold, courageous and hopeful,” he did not believe it had cleared the way for talks between the government and the ANC.

De Klerk says he has decided to release Mandela unconditionally, and Viljoen says the release will come “very soon.” But Foreign Minister Roelof F. (Pik) Botha urged reporters Tuesday “not to believe people who say the decision rests solely with the South African government.”

Mandela’s wife, Winnie, has said her husband is refusing to leave prison until the government lifts the 3 1/2-year-old state of emergency and releases all activists jailed for politically inspired crimes.

But Boesak said the world’s most famous prisoner had set no such preconditions.

“He will not hold onto the chairs and tables and kick and say, ‘I won’t come out,’ ” Boesak said after a three-hour meeting with Mandela at Victor Verster prison farm near Cape Town. “But he will warn them: ‘If you do release me and the conditions that we have put have not been met, then I will be obliged to make a statement on those conditions.’ ”

The government has declined to specify the factors delaying Mandela’s release, other than to cite the prisoner’s own “personal considerations” and government worries about his safety.

Botha, one of the architects of De Klerk’s liberalization policies, said the state of emergency, several key provisions of which were eliminated Friday, will be ended “as soon as possible.” But he suggested that it might not be removed before Mandela’s release.

“South Africa has been going through an uneasy time,” Botha said. “If we withdraw all the regulations and suddenly large-scale turbulence starts and forces us to reintroduce these measures . . . I can assure you we will pay a heavier price than (if we) just test the waters for awhile.”

In the meantime, the government is seeking an ANC response to its new policy reforms. In his speech Friday, De Klerk lifted a ban on the ANC and about 60 other anti-apartheid groups, removed restrictions on nearly 400 activists and rescinded provisions of the emergency decree that had not been comprehensively enforced.

The moves went a long way toward meeting the pre-negotiation demands of the ANC and other anti-apartheid groups. The ANC has said it welcomes De Klerk’s actions but has pointed out that several demands remain to be met, including the release of Mandela and other political prisoners and an end to the emergency decree.

However, Viljoen described the ANC response thus far as, “to put it mildly, rather ambiguous” and he lamented statements by ANC leaders that included “the rumblings and echoes of continuing use of force and violence.”

The ANC’s 35-member national executive committee is meeting in Lusaka, Zambia, in the coming days to formulate a detailed response to De Klerk’s speech.