Mandela Calls for U.N. Steps in S. Africa Strife : Debate: He urges Security Council to investigate township violence and help restart constitutional talks.

The white-minority South African government and its black opponents squared off in an emergency U.N. Security Council session Wednesday, with Nelson Mandela urging the council to investigate and take steps to end township violence and restart constitutional talks.

Mandela, whose African National Congress pulled out of those negotiations three weeks ago, accused the government of waging war on his supporters and of insisting that “the political majority, no matter how large, should be subjected to veto by minority parties” in writing a new constitution.

The Security Council debate, on a resolution to dispatch a special U.N. envoy to South Africa to explore ways of ending the violence, brought together at U.N. headquarters in New York a dozen key black and white South African leaders from across the political spectrum.

U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali has offered to send former U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance to South Africa, and the ANC and the government have said they would welcome such a mission.

However, the draft Security Council resolution, expected to be approved unanimously today by the 15-member panel, would limit his duties to recommending measures that would end the violence and create conditions for a resumption of talks.

For that reason, the U.N. mission is unlikely to break the talks deadlock immediately. But it may help pave the way for Mandela to return to the table with President Frederik W. de Klerk.

And South Africans, who watched the proceedings live on state-run television, were encouraged by the debate, which marked the first time that the country’s black and white leaders have brought their bitter contest over the future to an international forum.

Among the leaders scheduled to speak today is South African Foreign Minister Roelof F. (Pik) Botha. Botha has strongly denied any government involvement in the violence. The government says steps are being taken to end the carnage, and it says it is still committed to constitutional talks with the black majority.

Edward Perkins, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said the United States supports sending a U.N. goodwill mission to South Africa to “offer its services to bring all parties together.” He said that the team would attempt to “enhance negotiations but not seek to supplant them.”

Perkins, a former U.S. ambassador to South Africa, applauded the efforts of South Africans to bring an end to apartheid, but he added that “the violence that has racked South Africa is too great a price and must be brought under control. The world is watching.”

The tough tone of the speeches Wednesday reflected the deep divisions that remain in South Africa, where blacks outnumber whites five to one.

Constitutional negotiations, launched with great fanfare last December, stalled in mid-May. And they were broken off formally last month by the ANC after the massacre of more than 40 men, women and children in the township of Boipatong.

The ANC has set 14 conditions for its return to the table, demanding that the government take specific steps to end the township violence and accept the principle of majority rule in South Africa.

On the eve of the Security Council session, De Klerk took several steps to meet the ANC’s demands. Among other things, he agreed to disband three controversial security force units, made up mostly of foreign blacks under white commanders, which have been implicated in township violence.

De Klerk also said he would soon be instituting a ban on the carrying of dangerous weapons in townships designated as “unrest areas.”

The ANC on Wednesday said that De Klerk’s actions fell far short of its demands, and the congress accused the president of a last-minute attempt to sway international opinion in the government’s favor.

“We will have to wait and see what he (De Klerk) does,” Mandela said on NBC’s “Today” show Wednesday. “But already there are indications that the move he has taken is a smoke screen to mislead the world body.”

In his tough, 30-minute speech to the Security Council, Mandela said the violence was the fault of the government, “through acts of omission and commission.”

Mandela acknowledged that the causes of violence, which has claimed nearly 8,000 black lives in the past three years, are complex. But he contended that government complicity in the bloodshed had been established by court trials, an independent judicial commission and numerous international fact-finding missions. And he said the government has failed to use its capacity to end the violence.

“It is clear that the central thrust of the violence is to weaken the ANC,” Mandela said. “The hard fact of the matter is that the South African government has never relented in its war against the democratic movement of our country.”

The government says the violence stems from fighting between supporters of the ANC and of the Inkatha Freedom Party. But the government has long had close ties with Inkatha.

Mandela said the ANC-Inkatha rivalry played a role, and he admitted that there have been instances of “counter-violence” by his own supporters. But he said the ANC strongly opposes violence, and he added that it was difficult to restrain his supporters when they continued to come under attack by the government and its allies in Inkatha.

Kraft reported from Johannesburg, South Africa, and Pine from Washington.