South Africa Is ‘Ankle-Deep in Blood,’ De Klerk Says : Racial strife: He opens a peace conference to address factional fighting among blacks.

President Frederik W. de Klerk, opening South Africa’s first peace conference, said Friday that his nation is “ankle-deep in blood” and that black violence is the single biggest stumbling block to power-sharing talks.

The president also reversed himself and released seven prisoners on a hunger strike in Cape Town, including five who had been hospitalized in critical condition on the 24th day of their fast to protest government delays in fulfilling its promise to release all political inmates.

The government-sponsored peace conference, which ends today in Pretoria, was called to address the fight between black factions that has claimed 1,500 lives in South Africa during the past year. But it was hampered from the outset by the absence of key black opposition groups, including the African National Congress, whose supporters have been among the combatants.

The ANC refused to attend because the conference was sponsored by the government, which ANC Deputy President Nelson Mandela contends is a “belligerent” in the violence. Mandela says the ANC would be willing to take part in a conference sponsored by a neutral party, such as religious leaders.

De Klerk criticized the ANC and others who refused to attend, saying the violence “should transcend all political and other divisive factors. This is not the time to be small-minded or to play politics.” But he also said the participants explored ways of getting the ANC and other groups involved in peace talks.

The president also called for a “mighty effort” to end the violence, and said the conference will “send a clear message to all South Africans and the international community that we will no longer stand for violence.”

“People are dying every day, children are losing their fathers and mothers, our country in many areas stands ankle-deep in blood,” he said. “We are a civilized country. We should never become immune to this.”

The 200 delegates represented a wide range of groups, from the right-wing Afrikaner Resistance Movement to the Inkatha Freedom Party of Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi. Speakers offered a raft of suggestions to stem the fighting, from a code of conduct “to spell out the rules of democracy” to an independent peacekeeping force.

The ANC came under sharp criticism from many delegates who seem to believe that the ANC is the chief protagonist in the fighting. When Brian Currin, director of Lawyers for Human Rights, suggested a peacekeeping force and a judicial commission to investigate state-sponsored violence--two demands of the ANC--he was greeted with laughter and jeering.

The fighting, which has escalated in recent months, has pitted supporters of the ANC against Buthelezi’s Zulu-based Inkatha movement. Four years of fighting in Inkatha’s home base of Natal province has claimed 4,000 lives, and the battlefront has spread to Johannesburg-area townships.

ANC leaders have blamed Inkatha for starting the trouble, and they say Inkatha warriors are being aided by the police. They also have blamed a mysterious “third force,” which they charge operates within the state security services in an attempt to undermine power-sharing talks.

Buthelezi told delegates that the ANC’s “killing talk” is generating the violence and that Inkatha supporters are merely retaliating. The Zulu chief devoted seven pages of an 11-page speech to criticizing the ANC but concluded by saying that the ANC should be drawn into future peace talks.

Eugene TerreBlanche, the leader of the far-right Afrikaner Resistance Movement, said peace is unattainable in South Africa unless the country is divided into parcels where whites and black ethnic groups could rule themselves.

Until then, he said, “you are not going to have peace, only revolution.”

Meanwhile, the government, fearing the imminent death of hunger-striking prisoners, released the seven inmates in Cape Town, including Gordon Webster, who had been serving a 25-year sentence for terrorism and murder in the death of a police colonel in 1986. Webster and four of those released had been kept under guard in Somerset Hospital, where their condition became critical after they refused food since May 1.

Two other inmates remained hospitalized, and 190 more still are on hunger strikes, civil rights lawyers said. The hunger strike was an attempt by people who regard themselves as political prisoners to force the government to live up to its agreement to free them. The government agreed last August to release all political prisoners by April 30 in exchange for the ANC’s agreement to suspend its guerrilla war against Pretoria.

So far, about 1,000 prisoners have been released under the program, but civil rights lawyers say an additional 1,000 are being held for political crimes.