Pretoria tries to lure right to the polls: Government holds secret talks with Freedom Alliance

SOUTH African government negotiators travelled to a secret 'bush' venue yesterday evening for talks with the right-wing Freedom Alliance in a last attempt to persuade it to abandon threats of civil war and take part in April's elections.

Evasion and procrastination have characterised such encounters in recent months but government officials said yesterday that no further delays were possible. The crunch has arrived, because in 10 days' time the multi-party Negotiating Council, the mainstream forum from which the Freedom Alliance has excluded itself, is due to conclude a new interim constitution.

On 22 November the apartheid parliament is due to sit for the last time to ratify the constitution and pave the way for the establishment of a power-sharing Transitional Executive Council, whose task it will be to prepare for free and fair elections on 27 April.

The government and the African National Congress have been adamant in recent days that these deadlines must be met, for otherwise it will become logistically impossible to hold the elections on time. Both President F W de Klerk and Nelson Mandela have re-stated their determination to keep to the schedule.

On the table at the meeting last night was a final offer worked out in a meeting last week between the government and the ANC, both of which feel under pressure - for fear of a bloodbath - to accommodate the Alliance's demands for self- determination. For the Alliance - the Inkatha Freedom Party, the Conservative Party, the Afrikaner Volksfront and the Bophuthatswana and Ciskei 'homeland' governments - make up in guns what they lack in numbers.

The new offer before the Alliance represented what ANC officials called 'the very last' of numerous concessions they have already made to demands for the establishment of a federal state - a system of government they rejected when constitutional negotiations began three years ago.

Mr de Klerk, who has battled in favour of a maximum devolution of federal powers all along, has pronounced himself satisfied with the details of the arrangement reached with the ANC. 'There will be a federal republic of South Africa,' he declared on Friday.

The question at the start of last night's meeting was whether the Alliance would be satisfied too. A government spokesman said yesterday he hoped the meeting, which is due to end tomorrow, would result 'either in the Freedom Alliance or parts thereof joining us'.

The salient points of the new government-ANC agreement are:

Elected provincial governments will be able to legislate with a 'reasonable' measure of independence from central government on such matters as policing, education, health, transport and agriculture.

Provincial governments will be permitted, subject to national policy, to impose certain taxes within their boundaries and they will receive 'equitable' shares of tax collected nationally.

In a government of national unity, which will serve for five years after the April election, provision will be made for the election of two deputy presidents, the condition being that the parties they represent obtain at least 20 per cent of the natonal vote.

Five per cent of the vote would be the minimum requirement for a party to obtain a seat in cabinet.

These proposals have been largely targeted at the Freedom Alliance. The hope is that a federal solution will persuade the likes of the Inkatha leader, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, that, if he wins in Natal province, he would not be swamped by an ANC- led central government.

The plan for two deputy presidents, to whose influence the powers of the president (almost certainly Nelson Mandela) would be subject, provides the Freedom Alliance with the possibility, should it stand as a bloc in the election, of securing a lever on the new government.

The feeling in government circles last night was that Inkatha, Bophuthatswana, Ciskei and Inkatha could be tempted by the proposals but that the Conservative Party almost certainly would not.

What the CP wants is a fully independent sovereign Afrikaner nation - what it calls a volkstaat and South African journalists call 'Boerassic Park'.