South Africa Negotiations to Resume : Talks: Black and white leaders agree to reconvene within four weeks to forge constitution. Flare-up of fatal violence underscores urgency of finding a political settlement.

Black and white leaders agreed Saturday to launch a new round of national constitutional talks “as a matter of national urgency” within four weeks, restarting the process that broke down last May.

In reaching their decision, the government, the African National Congress and 24 other organizations from across the political spectrum in South Africa took an important initial step toward tackling the major obstacles to a peaceful settlement and extending voting rights to blacks.

Although the parties aired their often-divergent visions of a new South Africa during the two-day meeting that ended Saturday, they made no attempt to resolve those differences, settling instead on a single, firm commitment to chart the future through negotiations.

“A torch of hope has been lit,” said Cyril Ramaphosa, the ANC’s secretary general. “We are confident that the way has now been opened for the resolution of conflict in our country.”

Roelf Meyer, President Frederik W. de Klerk’s chief negotiator, said the planning conference had achieved its sole objective by winning a promise to resume multi-party negotiations by April 5.

“We are on target,” Meyer said. “Reality and reason have succeeded in bringing us together. And the government is very happy about the outcome of the conference.”

The importance of resuming formal constitutional talks, and ending the violence and growing anxiety in the country, was driven home by news of a second slaying of blacks in Natal province. On Friday night, unknown gunmen opened fire on a taxi-bus, killing 10 people. A few days earlier, in the same area near Pietermaritzburg, gunmen killed six schoolchildren.

No motive for the attacks has been established, but police have said the timing indicates that the assailants may be part of an effort to derail constitutional talks.

The attacks, the first major incidents of violence in the area in several months, occurred in a region where supporters of the ANC and its rivals in the Inkatha Freedom Party have been at war for several years. Both the ANC and Inkatha have officially condemned the attacks.

The ANC and the government, the two main parties in the talks, believe the coming negotiations will lead, in a matter of months, to the creation of a “transitional executive council,” in which all 26 parties will work together to level the playing field for a campaign and democratic elections in the first half of next year. The ANC also has said that it will call for the removal of the remaining economic sanctions against South Africa as soon as an election date is set.

But a variety of smaller parties, from the political left as well as right, remain potential spoilers. Political analysts say major compromises still will have to be made when the negotiations resume.

The right-wing white Conservative Party, for instance, abstained from voting on the resolution Saturday, saying it wants to retain the option of withdrawing from the talks. The Conservatives have demanded that the other parties recognize the white Afrikaner’s right to self-determination.

“We are deeply concerned that the exercise (negotiations) will fail because this key issue has not been addressed,” Conservative negotiator Tom Langley said. But he said the party would remain part of the committee organizing the talks, “keeping our options open while continuing to state our case.”

Constitutional talks stalled last May in disagreement over preserving veto power for a white minority over actions by a majority black government. They were broken off a few weeks later amid charges by blacks that the government was not controlling large-scale violence in black townships.

When multi-party talks resume, negotiators will have to resolve several important matters that have blocked agreements in the past. For the talks to succeed, the leaders must decide who will draw up a new constitution and what will be done about the nominally independent black homelands. They also must find a way to meet the demands of Inkatha and right-wing whites for pre-election guarantees of strong regional autonomy.

One of the first orders of business in the new constitutional negotiations will be deciding what to do with agreements reached during the short-lived multi-party talks last year. Several of the parties now involved in the talks had boycotted the negotiations last year.

The ANC and the government want those agreements, which include the creation of the transitional executive council, to be the basis for the new round of talks.

The planning forum also agreed Saturday that decisions during the future talks will be reached by “sufficient consensus.” Under that principle, used in last year’s negotiations, decisions can be taken if there is enough agreement to enable the process to move forward. Parties that disagree with the decisions can record their objections.