De Klerk Clears Way for First Talks With ANC : South Africa: But in a setback for the president, a weekend summit with other African leaders is scuttled.

President Frederik W. de Klerk cleared the way Thursday for the first talks between his government and the once-outlawed African National Congress by welcoming the guerrillas’ decision to send a high-level delegation to meet with him.

“This commitment to talks with the government on ways and means of getting negotiations off the ground is a positive step,” said De Klerk, who lifted a 30-year ban on the ANC earlier this month. “I sincerely believe direct communication is the best way to attain this. Foreign agencies and foreign intervention will bring us nowhere.”

But De Klerk’s first chance to significantly strip away South Africa’s diplomatic isolation in Africa was scuttled Thursday when a planned weekend mini-summit in Zaire between the president and four other African heads of state fell apart.

Pretoria had been touting the meeting as a diplomatic breakthrough in black-ruled Africa, but the ANC used its considerable influence in Africa by appealing to the Organization of African Unity to prevent the summit. The ANC contended that it is too early to reward South Africa for its reform initiatives, which have thus far fallen short of ANC demands.

Zaire President Mobuto Sese Seko, one of Pretoria’s few friends in Africa, had arranged the summit and invited the leaders of Chad, Rwanda, Burundi and the Central African Republic. But, amid indications that the invited African leaders were reluctant to attend, Mobuto asked Thursday that the meeting be postponed and De Klerk agreed. No new date has been set.

In an interview on state-run television Thursday night, De Klerk said the summit would have been an indication that South Africa “has a crucial role to play on the continent.” But he said the postponement didn’t worry him.

“I’m not lying awake thinking about it,” he said.

South Africa has formal diplomatic relations with only one major African country, Malawi, but it maintains trade missions in Zimbabwe, Botswana and Mozambique. It also has secret economic agreements and diplomatic contacts with several dozen other African countries.

The ANC, whose 30-year guerrilla war against white minority-led rule in South Africa has been supported by most of Africa, has welcomed the sweeping reforms that De Klerk has instituted in recent weeks, including the release of ANC leader Nelson R. Mandela.

But ANC leaders have indicated that the international campaign to isolate South Africa, which includes economic sanctions as well as cultural and sports boycotts, must continue until De Klerk does more. De Klerk has tried to lure the ANC and other black leaders to the negotiating table by lifting many restrictions on anti-government political activities. But his government still maintains laws allowing racially segregated residential areas, schools and hospitals.

The ANC announced last week that it would send a delegation to meet De Klerk to discuss the remaining obstacles to negotiations, including a 3 1/2-year-old state of emergency that gives police broad powers to put down unrest. Another pre-negotiation demand of the ANC is the release of several thousand prisoners convicted of politically inspired violence.

De Klerk said Thursday that he was giving immediate attention to arrangements for the visit, including “legal uncertainties.” Those uncertainties include the fact that most of the exiled ANC leaders who would be part of the delegation could be subject to arrest and charges ranging from terrorism to treason upon their return home.

The president said he was disappointed that the ANC refuses to end its simmering armed struggle and continues to insist on preconditions to negotiations “in spite of the new climate created by the government’s recent decision.”

As the primary liberation movement representing South Africa’s 27 million blacks, the ANC holds the key to those negotiations. The government needs the ANC to help it draw up a new constitution for South Africa that will be accepted by the black majority and the rest of the world.

Mandela, who launched the ANC’s armed struggle in 1961, plans to make his first overseas visit next week, traveling to Zambia, the headquarters of the ANC, and to Sweden, where ANC President Oliver Tambo is recovering from a stroke.

Before he leaves, though, Mandela is scheduled to address a rally in the port city of Durban, where three years of factional fighting between ANC supporters and blacks aligned with the more conservative Inkatha movement has claimed more than 2,500 lives.

On Thursday, Walter Sisulu headed an ANC delegation in its first face-to-face peace talks with Inkatha. Both groups say they oppose apartheid, but Inkatha, led by Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, has rejected the ANC’s use of violence and its sanctions campaign.