De Klerk Expects Renewed S. Africa Talks

Opening what may be the last formal session of a South African Parliament that excludes blacks, President Frederik W. de Klerk declared Friday that the nation’s black and white leaders are likely to resume constitutional negotiations by the beginning of March--10 months after talks broke down.

“At present, there is a positive spirit among most of the political parties,” De Klerk told a joint session of the white, mixed-race Colored and Indian chambers of Parliament. And everyone realizes, he added, “that immeasurable damage will be done if we do not make progress now.”

That fear of failure, fed in recent months by the political turmoil in places such as Angola and Somalia, may be helping prod South Africa’s quarreling black and white leaders to return to the table.

Every South African faces a choice now, De Klerk told Parliament: “Either support constitutional change and everything that is reasonably required for its success or retire into the laager (circled wagons) and prepare for an armed and bloody struggle.”

If full-blown constitutional negotiations resume soon, as is expected, South Africa could have a transitional executive council installed by June, under De Klerk’s timetable. That council, with representatives from the African National Congress, the government and other major parties, will oversee the security forces, the electoral process and the state-run broadcasting company, giving blacks their first taste of national power and ending three centuries of white-minority rule.

De Klerk has said South Africa could hold its first multiracial poll early next year. In that election, voters would choose a constituent assembly to govern the country temporarily and draw up a new, permanent constitution.

The ANC, the main black liberation movement, has said it hopes the election can be held this year, although most political analysts believe that is probably too soon.

De Klerk said Friday that a “broad consensus is slowly but surely beginning to take shape.” And his negotiators this week concluded five days of closed-door talks with the ANC and, separately, patched up disagreements with the government’s former allies in the Inkatha Freedom Party, a Zulu-dominated group.

But four major obstacles still block a final agreement between the ruling National Party and the ANC, the two major players in the process.

The most important of those hurdles is the reincorporation of the four nominally independent black homelands into South Africa. At least two of those homelands have said they strongly oppose reincorporation. The ANC says the homelands and the homeland leaders are creations of apartheid, the white-imposed policy of racial separation, and must be dissolved. The three other hurdles are:

* Power-sharing between the party winning a majority of votes in any future election and those winning a significant minority.

* The powers of states and regional governments.

* The status of armed groups, such as the ANC’s military wing.

Three years have passed since De Klerk stunned Parliament by turning his back on four decades of apartheid, legalizing the ANC and others of his political opponents and vowing to negotiate the future with the voteless black majority.

The process of reform has moved fairly quickly since then, though some remnants of apartheid remain. But negotiations have gone much more slowly, dogged largely by the political ambitions of some regional leaders, growing impatience among the black majority and an unwillingness on all sides to make major compromises.