Mandela Calls for End of S. African Sanctions : Commerce: Leader of ANC cites democratic advances, says lifting curbs will aid stability, progress. Clinton urges swift action. Arms embargo would remain for now.

In a historic appeal, African National Congress President Nelson Mandela on Friday called on foes of apartheid around the world to lift almost all sanctions against South Africa before economic disaster blocks its march toward a multiracial democracy.

“In response to the historic advances toward democracy that have been achieved . . . and to help create the necessary conditions for stability and social progress, we believe the time has come when the international community should lift all economic sanctions against South Africa,” Mandela said in his landmark speech in the grand General Assembly hall where the Pretoria regime first was made a global pariah for its official policies of racial discrimination.

Mandela’s remarks were a signal that the ANC is satisfied with the progress toward dismantling apartheid and a symbolic invitation to the world to readmit South Africa to the community of nations.

Officials quickly heeded his call:

* In Washington, President Clinton applauded moves by the South African government to give blacks their first real say in governing South Africa and urged swift action to lift remaining sanctions. The President said Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown will soon lead a trade mission to South Africa.

The House was not in session, but the Senate voted to rescind a ban on U.S. support for South African loan requests at the International Monetary Fund and to allow the U.S. government to finance American exports to South Africa.

* In Ottawa, External Affairs Minister Perrin Beatty said Canada--which has led the Commonwealth movement to isolate South Africa--soon would remove its trade, investment and financial sanctions against South Africa. Australia announced that it is lifting all its sanctions, except those on arms and oil, and other Commonwealth countries were expected to follow suit.

* In Los Angeles, City Councilmen Zev Yaroslavsky and Mark Ridley-Thomas proposed that the city repeal its sanctions, which have steered tens of millions of dollars in contracts away from companies doing business in South Africa since the restrictions took effect in August, 1986. That proposal will be considered by the council Wednesday; the law would be repealed 30 days after that.

New York Mayor David Dinkins announced that he had asked his City Council to rescind its anti-apartheid sanctions against South Africa.

While Mandela’s speech Friday cheered many in his homeland, formally opened the way for a dramatic shift in attitudes and practices of anti-apartheid activists around the world and raised prospects for new business activity in South Africa, there was one confusion in his plea: He was ambiguous about whether the time had also come to lift the Security Council-imposed oil embargo.

Hinting that hard-liners in his own party wanted this kept in place until a black government rules in South Africa, Mandela said the fate of the oil embargo should be left to the discretion of the United Nations.

Since he is still not an official of the South African government, Mandela was technically only reporting to the 17-member Special Committee on Apartheid. But the United Nations seized the drama of the moment by moving the committee’s meeting into the General Assembly, where there is space for delegations from all 184 members of the world body.

For the global community, there has been no greater symbol of international abhorrence of white-minority rule in South Africa than the rhetoric and resolutions of the United Nations.

The General Assembly has passed anti-apartheid resolutions relentlessly since 1952, continually calling on countries to impose economic sanctions on the white-ruled country. Since 1974, the United Nations has even prevented the South African delegation from taking its place at meetings of the General Assembly.

The Security Council, whose resolutions have the force of international law, first voted an arms embargo on South Africa in 1963, made it mandatory in 1977 and strengthened it year after year, finally adding an embargo on oil, as well. Mandela made it clear Friday that he does not want the arms embargo lifted until a majority black government rules in South Africa.

While there have been doubts raised about the effectiveness of international sanctions in general, and the South African measures in particular, Mandela appeared before the United Nations just a day after the white-run South African Parliament--after years of external and internal pressure--had passed legislation creating a Transitional Executive Council of all races to supervise the government as the country prepares for its democratic, multiracial elections next April 27.

While the black leader told U.N. ambassadors and officials that “our common victory against the only system to be declared a crime against humanity since the defeat of Nazism is in sight,” he also painted a dismal picture of the social and economic life of present-day South Africa.

“The apartheid system has left a swath of disaster in its trail,” he said. “We have an economy that is tottering on the brink of an even deeper depression than the one we are experiencing now. What this means practically is millions of people who have no food, no jobs, and no homes.

“The very fabric of society is threatened by a process of disintegration,” he went on, “characterized by high and increasing rates of violent crime, the growth in the numbers of people so brutalized that they will kill for a pittance and the collapse of all social norms.”

At a later news conference, Mandela called for “a massive investment of funds” for an economy in tatters. He also acknowledged, however, that “the high level of violence and ordinary crime does not contribute to a climate of investment.”

But he said that the lifting of sanctions, demonstrating the international community’s commitment to a democratic South Africa, would contribute to an improved economy that would help lessen the level of violence.

Questioned closely about why he had not called for a lifting of the oil embargo, Mandela said: “This is a sensitive question which I am reluctant to discuss with the mass media.”

But he noted that his party is on record as opposing the lifting of the arms and oil embargo until a black government rules South Africa. Mandela said he understood that the end of the oil embargo might be necessary for a revival of the economy and “therefore we definitely feel that this is a matter of negotiation” with the United Nations.

An aide to Mandela told reporters that the ANC will ask the United Nations privately to lift the oil embargo but did not want to do so publicly. Mandela evidently did not want to irk ANC hard-liners who want him to keep to the written policy against lifting this embargo.

Mandela also acknowledged that the ANC had been negotiating with the Afrikaner Volks Front, a coalition of white separatists. He said he had reached the conclusion that these rightists have “fears and concerns which may be baseless but are genuine.”

In an attempt to assuage these fears, he said, the ANC has been talking with this party. “We cannot accommodate that demand (for a separate white state) in the way they put it,” he said, “but some kind of compromise accommodation is possible.” But Mandela did not outline what he had in mind.

Responding to Mandela’s speech, the President lifted most of the federal government’s remaining economic sanctions against South Africa and called on states, cities, universities, labor unions and others to move quickly to end their bans on doing business with the country.

“We must now respect the judgment of the leaders of South Africa and move to lift our remaining economic sanctions,” Clinton said in a statement. “But removing sanctions will not be enough. Americans who have been so active in breaking down the pillars of apartheid must remain committed to helping build the non-racial market democracy that comes in its wake.”

The Senate approved legislation to repeal the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act approved by Congress in 1986 over the objections of then-President Ronald Reagan. The measure, passed on a voice vote, ends restrictions on American support for South African loans at the International Monetary Fund and on Export-Import Bank activities in that nation.

“South Africa is at a critical turning point,” said Sen. Nancy Landon Kassebaum (R-Kan.), author of the bill. “Lifting the sanctions is a key way for the United States to show its support of the peaceful and democratic changes in South Africa.”

In the United States, most of the federal sanctions against South Africa were lifted in July, 1991, when then-President George Bush determined that South Africa was making progress toward ending apartheid.

“Americans can take pride in the role they have played through government, churches, unions, universities, activist groups and businesses throughout America to protest the apartheid system,” Clinton said.

Times staff writers Norman Kempster in Washington and David Ferrell in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

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