Baker Holds Talks With S. Africa Envoy

ROME — In the first high-level meeting between the Bush Administration and the government of South Africa, Secretary of State James A. Baker III met Foreign Minister Roelof F. (Pik) Botha here Saturday and extended an invitation for the new South African leader, Frederik W. de Klerk, to visit Washington.

No date for the meeting has been set, however, and jockeying between the two nations continues. De Klerk, currently the leader of South Africa’s dominant National Party, is scheduled to be elected president of South Africa in September.

Pretoria would like him to visit Washington once he has become chief of state. The United States would prefer to avoid that.

Baker is here with President Bush, preparing for a NATO summit that begins Monday in Brussels.

After the meeting, Botha repeated the familiar South African position that the National Party’s reform program is “dismantling” apartheid.

Doesn’t Accept Claim

Baker responded that he was “glad to hear that” but did not say that he accepted the claim. Although former President Ronald Reagan on some occasions said publicly that he believed that South Africa was ending racial discrimination, the U.S. government has never accepted that contention, noting that South Africa continues to refuse full political and social rights to its black majority.

Botha, who is considered one of the more liberal members of the country’s white-led minority government, said, “We accept that white domination must end.”

U.S. officials said Baker had told Botha the U.S. “hopes that the next government will take actions” to back up Botha’s words.