S. African President to Meet With Tutu, 2 Other Apartheid Opponents

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa —  President Frederik W. de Klerk on Friday agreed to meet with Anglican Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu and two other church anti-apartheid leaders next week for unprecedented talks about South Africa’s racial conflict.

De Klerk immediately agreed to a request by the church leaders for urgent talks “about the crisis in our land,” the president’s office said.

It will be De Klerk’s first direct meeting with top anti-apartheid leaders since he replaced Pieter W. Botha as president Aug. 15. The meeting has been scheduled for Wednesday in Pretoria.

Tutu, who was in the United States on Friday, released a statement through his office in Cape Town saying that he and his colleagues believe De Klerk “does not appreciate the far-reaching nature of the steps he must take to get negotiations off the ground” between blacks and government leaders.

De Klerk has offered to negotiate a new constitution within five years that would extend political rights to the disenfranchised black majority. However, he has ruled out participation by the outlawed African National Congress guerrilla movement unless it renounces violence.

Tutu, referring to this position, stated, “Negotiations which exclude the legitimate leaders of our people, which the government appears to be contemplating, will intensify . . . our country’s crisis.”

“It is not our intention to go to Mr. De Klerk claiming to be negotiators,” Tutu stated. “As church leaders, we would see ourselves as facilitators who would try to create the climate for negotiations.”

Besides Tutu, the clergymen who requested the meeting were the Rev. Allan Boesak, president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, and the Rev. Frank Chikane, general secretary of the South African Council of Churches.