ANC Stands Firm on Its Demands : South Africa: Reeling from massacre, group says it will meet with De Klerk--but only if previous conditions are satisfied.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — The African National Congress on Thursday said yes--and no--to a meeting between Nelson Mandela and President Frederik W. de Klerk, agreeing to the summit but demanding that the government first meet the same demands that have stalled constitutional talks for three months.

The announcement, made after a daylong meeting by the ANC’s leaders, reflected a growing division within the organization, which still is reeling from the killing of 28 of its members by black homeland forces this week.

And it meant that talks between ANC Secretary General Cyril Ramaphosa and Roelf Meyer, De Klerk’s constitutional affairs minister, will not be expanded until the government meets conditions set by the ANC when it pulled out of constitutional negotiations in June.

Among other things, the ANC is asking the government to ban the carrying of dangerous weapons, to station police at single men’s dormitories and to begin releasing the 400 political prisoners who the ANC says remain in jail.

If the government does not meet the demands, the ANC said, a Mandela-De Klerk meeting would be doomed to failure and would “take the country irretrievably backward.”

Foreign Minister Roelof F. (Pik) Botha said earlier Thursday that he has written to the United Nations secretary general asking for help in mediating the dispute between the government and the ANC. The first of 30 U.N. observers have been assigned to South Africa and are due to arrive within days.

The government has taken what it believes are important steps to meet the ANC’s demands, hoping for a resumption of constitutional negotiations. But it has thus far been unwilling to go further, at least partly because it does not want to appear to its constituents to be knuckling under to the ANC.

Zach de Beer, leader of the liberal white Democratic Party, criticized both the ANC and the government Thursday for engaging in finger-pointing and power plays rather than an earnest search for solutions to the country’s woes.

“The government and the ANC should start facing the country’s problems before they start fighting elections,” De Beer said. “They are both constantly seeking to score debating points on each other, constantly seeking to win votes in an election that will never happen if they go on making the mess they are making at the moment.”

By the standards of recent days, the ANC’s statement Thursday was surprisingly moderate. It did not reject a Mandela-De Klerk summit out of hand.

The statement reflected divisions within the ANC between moderates and hard-liners. The moderates, who include Mandela, believe the killings were an indication of the importance of resuming negotiations with the white government. But some hard-liners want to hold out for more concessions, arguing that protest marches such as the bloody one in the Ciskei homeland have succeeded in putting more pressure on De Klerk.

In Monday’s episode, tens of thousands of ANC supporters marched into Ciskei, vowing to occupy the capital, Bisho, and ignore an agreement that would have kept the protest confined to a soccer stadium. The goal was to oust Brig. Gen. Oupa Gqozo, who took power last year in a coup .

Although Gqozo had threatened to open fire on the protesters, ANC leaders said they ignored the threat because they didn’t believe Gqozo’s forces would fire in the presence of international diplomats and journalists.

On Thursday, the ANC reiterated its demand for free political activity in Ciskei and for an interim administration to replace Gqozo.