S. Africa to Drop 3 Security Units to Foster ANC Talks

President Frederik W. de Klerk, seeking to restart negotiations with the African National Congress, announced late Tuesday that he will disband three notorious security force units, meeting one of the ANC’s 14 conditions for returning to the table.

And he went part way toward meeting another ANC demand by promising to ban the carrying of all dangerous weapons in townships declared “unrest areas” and institute new, heavy jail terms for offenders.

De Klerk’s decision marked the first concrete steps taken by the South African government to meet ANC demands since the black opposition pulled out of constitutional negotiations three weeks ago. And it came on the eve of a U.N. Security Council emergency session on South Africa.

The move falls far short of addressing ANC concerns about escalating township violence and government intransigence in negotiations, and it is unlikely to bring the ANC back to the talks.

But De Klerk’s willingness to give in to the ANC on even two of its demands indicated his eagerness to keep the negotiations process alive and his fear of losing international support for his government’s reform program.

The U.N. Security Council session, called to consider ways of overcoming the impasse in South Africa, will be addressed today in New York by the government’s foreign minister, Roelof F. (Pik) Botha, ANC President Nelson Mandela and other South African political leaders.

The ANC plans to urge the United Nations to send an international team to monitor the violence in South Africa. Until recently, the government has rejected U.N. involvement in the country’s affairs. De Klerk still opposes U.N. supervision of the negotiations process, but he has said he would not object to a fact-finding mission by U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali or his envoy.

The president, in a statement issued after an all-day meeting of senior government officials Tuesday in Pretoria, said he will disband two South African Defense Force battalions as well as a South African police unit.

He also said that a ban on all dangerous weapons will be instituted as soon as possible. The new regulations will affect only “unrest areas.” More than a dozen townships are designated unrest areas.

The ban apparently would extend to assegais, or spears, which the Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party, the ANC’s township rival, considers “traditional weapons.”

Among the army units to be disbanded is 32 Battalion, which is made up of Portuguese-speaking blacks who sided with South Africa during the long war in Angola. That unit has been implicated in attacks on residents of a squatter camp near Johannesburg as well as other townships.