NEWS ANALYSIS : Stalled Talks Point to Split in ANC : South Africa: The group’s leadership has lost touch with its grass-roots support, some say.

The African National Congress’ decision to suspend planned talks with Pretoria, imperiling the South African peace process even before it begins, is a clear sign that ANC leaders and their supporters remain deeply divided over the idea of negotiating with the white-led government, analysts said Sunday.

“The ANC leadership is out of touch with the kind of passions and concerns on the ground, where many still find it very difficult to talk to ‘the oppressor (the government),’ ” said Robert Shrire, a professor of African studies at the University of Cape Town.

Suddenly backing away from a promise to meet with the government is the “politically inept way in which a fairly leaderless movement is responding opportunistically to grass-roots pressure,” Shrire added.

The extent of the turmoil in the ANC’s leadership ranks was evident at a news conference Sunday when Nelson R. Mandela, the new ANC deputy president, acknowledged differences of opinion with his colleagues.

Earlier Sunday, Mandela told an estimated 300,000 people at an ANC rally near Port Elizabeth that he is prepared to meet with President Frederik W. de Klerk soon to discuss ways of ending renewed violence in the country. But he said he will not lead an official delegation for talks with De Klerk’s government until Pretoria responds to ANC complaints about police killings of peaceful demonstrators. Only then, Mandela said, will the ANC and the government work out a new date for formal talks.

Most political analysts believe that the ANC has the most to lose by delaying its first face-to-face meeting with the government, which had been scheduled for April 11 in Cape Town. The two sides were to discuss obstacles to black-white talks, which include ANC demands that the 45-month-old state of emergency be lifted and that political prisoners be freed.

The ANC, in a telephone call from Mandela to De Klerk on Friday, called off those historic talks to protest police shootings in Sebokeng that touched off a day of violence and left at least 15 black protesters dead.

De Klerk has won worldwide praise for his efforts to get negotiations with the black majority under way and his willingness to talk to the ANC--the first white South African leader in 40 years to open his door to the movement. The ANC, by refusing to at least talk with De Klerk, risks being branded an extremist organization and losing support internationally as well as from the South African whites it is trying to woo.

De Klerk has promised to look into the police shootings, but he said such incidents are the key reason that the government and the ANC need to begin talking. “I told Mandela my door remained open and he was welcome to meet with me,” De Klerk said.

The ANC, the primary anti-apartheid movement in the country, has been rocked by the rapid reforms introduced by De Klerk. Since De Klerk legalized the ANC and freed Mandela last month, the ANC has been trying to reformulate its policies while re-establishing itself inside the country.

Several generations of ANC leaders inside the country now are free from prison, but the final decisions are made by the ANC’s 35-member national executive committee, which has yet to return from exile in Zambia.

ANC support inside the country over the years has been spread broadly across the spectrum of black politics, from radical young activists to older moderates. Now, disagreement among ANC leaders over how to respond to De Klerk’s initiatives has robbed the group of the powerful voice it needs to bring its supporters in line, analysts say.

“They’re having serious problems on the ground,” says a leader of the rival Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC). Support already appears to be growing for more radical black groups such as the PAC, which has flatly refused to negotiate with the government until it dismantles apartheid and agrees to hand over power to the black majority.

De Klerk supports a one-person, one-vote system but wants whites protected from black domination. Blacks, who have no vote in national affairs, outnumber whites 4 to 1 in South Africa.

De Klerk has taken considerable political risks in loosening restrictions on political expression to lure black leaders to his negotiating table. So far he has managed to maintain white support for those reforms, but many whites are worried about the upsurge of violence, and analysts think the president needs to make rapid progress toward a peaceful resolution.

The desire of older ANC leaders, especially the 71-year-old Mandela, to talk with De Klerk has divided ANC supporters.

“The ANC leadership has gone the celebrity route rather than the organizational route,” Shrire said. “While they’ve been acting as international stars, no one has been at home minding the store.”

Disarray in the ANC hierarchy has been evident for weeks. Last week, the ANC suddenly backed out of a joint rally in which political rivals Mandela and Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi would have shared a podium in a bold attempt to end the bloody factional fighting between their supporters in Natal province.

“For an organization that claims a commitment to the principle that South Africans should talk rather than shoot their way out of trouble, the ANC displays a remarkable reticence to talk,” the Sunday Times, the largest circulation newspaper in South Africa, said in an editorial Sunday.