From: vamg6792@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Mbanane)
Subject: UPI: KeKlerk welcomes talks with ANC on violence
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 00:57:57 GMT



	JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (UPI) -- President Frederik de Klerk said
Friday he welcomed the African National Congress announcement that it
would confer with the government on ways to avoid violent confrontations
such as the one this week that resulted in the massacre of 28 ANC
supporters by black homeland soldiers.
	``I welcome (ANC president Nelson Mandela's) acceptance of my
invitation to a meeting to discuss violence,'' de Klerk said in a
statement released by his office.
	``What is now of critical importance -- and what our country and its
people demand of us -- is that we should meet as urgently as possible,''
de Klerk added.
	He said Constitutional Development Minister Roelf Meyer would meet
ANC Secretary General Cyril Ramaphosa to discuss a date for the meeting,
its agenda and other related preparations.
	The South African Press Association reported that the two men were
expected to meet at the weekend.
	Ramaphosa told a news conference Thursday the anti-apartheid
organization was prepared to accept de Klerk's appeal for face-to-face
talks with Mandela following Monday's massacre in the nominally
independent homeland of Ciskei, but only if certain conditions were met.
	Ramaphosa said the talks had to be designed to produce concrete
results and preceded by practical steps by the government to end
politically motivated violence, such as a ban on the carrying of
dangerous weapons in public.
	De Klerk did not say if the government would comply with the demands
and said he would respond the ANC's statement in full at the meeting
with Mandela.
	``I am not going to comment on the unwarranted points which are
contained in the rest of the ANC statement. I will express my views on
these points during the discussion,'' de Klerk said in the statement,
which was released after the government's chief negotiators met Friday
morning to discuss the ANC response.
	De Klerk called for talks with Mandela two days after Ciskei soldiers
fired into a crowd of 20,000 ANC supporters, killing 28 people and
wounding another 196 as they marched to demand the resignation of the
homeland's military leader. Brig. Oupa Gqozo.
	The ANC regards Gqozo as a puppet of South Africa's white-minority
government.
	The government, while distancing itself from the actions of the
Ciskei soldiers, claims the ANC-led campaign of mass action and
industrial strikes, launched June 16 with the aim of eventually forcing
the government to relinquish power, provoked the confrontation.
	The massacre added to the more than 6,000 killings recorded since de
Klerk started his process of political reform in February 1990. The ANC
withdrew June 23 from multi-party talks on full democracy, saying the
government was involved in politically motivated violence.
	Pretoria denied the charges and called on the liberation movement to
return to the negotiating table.
	The ANC rejected the calls and said it would only return to the talks
once the government had satisfactorily met 14 demands aimed at ending
violence and hastening the democratic process.

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