Time to break ice for de Klerk, Kaunda

Press, 30 August 1989, Page 10

Time to break ice for de Klerk, Kaunda

NZPA-Reuter LlV, Sbia The South African leader, F. W. de Klerk, and the Zambian President, Kenneth Kaunda, broke the ice during their first meeting but shied away from discussing detailed solutions to end apartheid.

Both leaders described their 21/ 2 -hour meeting yesterday at a luxury hotel beside the Victoria Falls in southern Zambia as very useful. The talks centred on the future of South Africa and efforts to secure peace in Angola. But officials from both sides said the main outcome was that the two, black Africa’s fiercest critic of apartheid and South Africa’s newest white leader, had broken the ice and got to know each other.

“I found him a pleasant man. I think he is an earnest Christian who has thought a lot about the position in South Africa,” Mr de Klerk said on his plane during the flight home.

Close aides to Mr Kaunda said he had also been impressed by Mr de Klerk and saw in him a new breed of South African leader.

The two leaders said they would remain in contact. But they appeared to have deliberately avoided a confrontation over how to break the deadlock between South Africa’s white Government and its opponents on ways to end apartheid.

Mr de Klerk indicated that he had briefed Mr Kaunda on his white National Party’s five-year plan to give South Africa’s black majority a role in Government. “There are certain basic prin-

ciples the acting State President told me he believed in and which he has said publicly he intended to implement. Over this I see no disagreement,” Mr Kaunda told a brief news conference.

But Mr de Klerk made a point of insisting that Mr Kaunda had not raised the conditions for negotiations laid down by the African National Congress, the main guerrilla group fighting to end white minority rule in South Africa.

“It was not even on the agenda,” he said. Mr Kaunda said he would be reporting back to the leaders of southern Africa’s six frontline states about the talks. He was

also expected to brief the ANC.

The Zambian President has in public backed A.N.C. conditions for negotiations which demand that the South African Government end the present state of emergency, free political prisoners, reinstate political organisations and withdraw troops from black townships.

Mr de Klerk, who is expected to be confirmed as President after elections on September 6, has ruled out any negotiations with opposition groups unless they renounce violence.

The two leaders also discussed the faltering peace process in Angola.