Across Spectrum, S. African Parties Meet : Politics: For first time, nation’s more radical groups join effort to jump-start talks. But agreement may be elusive.

In an important first step toward jump-starting the process of democratic change here, 26 delegations from across the country’s broad political spectrum came together Friday to seek ways of ending the 10-month-old suspension of constitutional talks.

The beginning of the two-day session brought the main players--the government, the African National Congress and the Inkatha Freedom Party--together for the first time with left-wing blacks and right-wing whites who have boycotted previous negotiating forums.

But the difficulties South Africa still faces in trying to forge an agreement among these disparate political forces soon became evident.

Although the parties all agreed on the importance of resuming formal talks on the country’s future, vast differences in their negotiating platforms were highlighted in speech after speech.

Several hours of debate failed to produce agreement Friday on a resolution calling for multi-party negotiations to resume within a month.

The meeting was adjourned until today to give the executive committee time to decide how decisions would be reached by the forum.

“We’ve moved forward tremendously,” said Tertius Delport, part of the government’s delegation. “But this is not going to be easy. There are quite a number of procedural issues to be dealt with.”

The wide ideological spectrum represented at the planning conference would make it difficult to reach a consensus, Delport acknowledged. But, he said, “the will is there,” and, once a settlement is reached, “at least we know it will carry a wider spectrum of the political scene.”

ANC Secretary General Cyril Ramaphosa called on delegates to remember their “awesome responsibility to solve the problems that beset our country.”

“Our country is bleeding from every pore,” Ramaphosa said, recalling the murder of six children by unknown gunmen in Natal province this week. “Each of us (must) place the interests of our country above our party political interests.”

The large white, black, Indian and mixed-race delegations were led primarily by senior officials; none of the country’s top political leaders, including President Frederik W. de Klerk, ANC leader Nelson Mandela and Inkatha leader Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, were present.

Among the parties making their first appearance at a multi-party forum were the Conservative Party and the Afrikaner Volksunie Party, representing right-wing whites, and the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), a radical left-wing black group.

Both the Conservative Party and the PAC had refused to participate in the last round of multi-party talks, the Convention for a Democratic South Africa, which lasted five months before falling apart last May.

The Afrikaner Volksunie (United People) Party was created late last year by right-wing whites disenchanted with the Conservatives’ anti-negotiations stance.

The presence of more radical political parties, though, only seemed to highlight the discord that remains as South Africans try to chart a new course for the country that will extend voting rights for the first time to the black majority.

Representatives from the government and the ANC, the two most powerful opposing forces in South African politics, exhibited a remarkable degree of unanimity Friday. Leaders for both delegations told the conference that they see future negotiations as a way to lay the groundwork for democratic elections to create a constitution-writing body and a temporary government of national unity.

In talks preceding the meeting Friday, the government and the ANC had come to tentative agreements on many of the issues separating them.

But Buthelezi’s Inkatha Party, reiterating its opposition to early elections, said it had no desire to participate in a national unity government. Instead, its leaders argued that negotiators should themselves draft a new constitution, which would then be put to South African voters in a referendum.

Joe Matthews, leader of Inkatha’s delegation, accused the ANC and the government of reaching a power-sharing deal that they hoped to impose on other political parties in the country. “No one has a right to decide on behalf of others,” Matthews argued.

The Conservative Party and Afrikaner Volksunie, which share Inkatha’s suspicions of ANC-government collusion, repeated their demand for separate, autonomous regions for white South Africans.

“We lay claim to the right of self-determination for the Afrikaner people,” said Tom Langley, the Conservative delegation leader.