U.N. Will Send Envoy to Seek Peace in S. Africa : Conciliation: The Security Council also calls on all sides to return to negotiations on the nation’s future.

The U.N. Security Council on Thursday stepped up efforts to stop the escalating violence in South Africa and reopen the stalled negotiations on the nation’s future between the government and black-majority political parties.

By unanimous vote, the 15-member council agreed to dispatch a special representative to South Africa to explore ways to end the killing, and it called on all sides to return to the negotiating table, where talks have hit an impasse.

The council’s resolution, while falling short of a “permanent” U.N. presence requested the day before by Nelson Mandela, president of the African National Congress, nevertheless was acceptable both to Mandela’s forces and to the South African government of President Frederik W. de Klerk.

Although the United Nations made no formal announcement, it was widely expected that former U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance would be tapped for the special envoy post. Vance has performed similar roles on behalf of the United Nations in the former Soviet Union.

Thursday’s vote followed an impassioned defense of the government by South Africa’s foreign minister, Roelof F. (Pik) Botha, who denied Mandela’s charges that the government was inciting the violence in order to sabotage the talks and insisted that De Klerk is committed to multiracial rule.

Mandela’s accusations fly in the face of the reality that South Africa is trying to regain international confidence and attract more foreign investment, Botha argued. “It makes no sense--no sense whatsoever,” he told the Security Council.

Botha also issued an open invitation to Mandela and to the Inkatha Freedom Party, a rival to Mandela’s ANC, to meet immediately with government leaders to set up machinery to monitor the government’s measures in dealing with the situation and to solve any problems that threaten to provoke new violence.

Botha said the presence of what he called a U.N. “observer” could prove useful in such an effort, and he told reporters later that the government would find Vance an acceptable choice. But he continued to oppose what his government regards as U.N. interference in its internal affairs.

Botha’s appearance, in which the foreign minister pledged again and again that his government is committed to majority rule, was something of a historic moment for South Africa--whose diplomats until recently had been routinely snubbed by most U.N. delegations--and it won widespread praise Thursday.

The poignancy of the moment--and the obvious acceptance of the De Klerk government as respectable by most delegations--was not lost on Botha. “I am struck by the even-handedness of the council’s approach,” he said in his speech. “We appreciate it.”

Later, in a statement obviously meant for home consumption as well, Botha told reporters that the friendly reception he had received in the council meeting was “the reward” for his government’s having abandoned the old system of apartheid, or racial segregation.

Thursday’s vote marked yet another example of the council’s increasing willingness to assume a more active role in defusing international crises. The council played a key role in paving the way for Operation Desert Storm, the operation by an international military alliance in the war against Iraq last year, and has just dispatched peacekeeping forces to former republics of Yugoslavia.

It wasn’t immediately clear what can be accomplished by sending a special U.N. representative to South Africa. Diplomatic sources conceded that the envoy would have no powers beyond a mandate to try as hard as he can to get both sides together.

However, officials said that U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali is hoping that the appointment of a prominent diplomat will impress upon both sides that the international community is focusing on the situation and thus will heighten pressure for increased progress in the talks.

In his speech, Botha reiterated the steps that De Klerk has taken to cope with the recent violence in South Africa’s black townships, including imposition of stiffer penalties for possession of arms and measures to improve the hostels where black workers are housed, another source of discontent.

He also contended that the causes of the violence “are both complete and multidimensional,” saying some of the blame must be shared by Mandela’s ANC, which he said had been importing grenade launchers and assault rifles with the aid of Zimbabwe’s army.

But Botha repeatedly denied that the De Klerk government is anything but committed to bringing about black-majority rule. “I urge this council to accept once and for all that my party is not a white party any longer,” he said. “We have closed the book on apartheid, finally.”

Along with Botha, the council heard Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, head of the Inkatha Freedom Party and a longtime ally of the De Klerk government, take the foreign minister’s side in the dispute.