Botha Links Mandela Release With 2 Soviet Dissidents

CAPE TOWN, South Africa —  President Pieter W. Botha offered Friday to release imprisoned black nationalist leader Nelson Mandela in exchange for the freedom of Soviet dissidents Andrei D. Sakharov and Anatoly Shcharansky and a South African commando captured by Angola. Botha, opening the annual session of the South African Parliament, said his government is prepared to negotiate with “interested governments” for Mandela’s release after 23 years in prison.

“If I were to release Mr. Nelson Mandela on humanitarian grounds,” Botha said in a last-minute addition to his prepared speech, “could Capt. Wynand du Toit, Andrei Sakharov and Anatoly Shcharansky not also be released on humanitarian grounds? A positive response to this question could certainly form the basis of negotiations between interested governments.”

Shcharansky, 37, a computer scientist, was convicted of spying for the United States after he applied to emigrate to Israel and was sentenced to eight to 13 years in prison. Sakharov, 64, a dissident physicist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975, has been placed in internal exile in Gorky. Du Toit is a South African army commando who was captured last May in Angola’s northern enclave of Cabinda while on a raid to try and blow up American-owned oil-processing facilities there.

No Further Conditions

Botha set no further conditions in the surprise announcement--not that Mandela would have to go into exile, as the government proposed two months ago, or that he renounce violence as a way of overthrowing South Africa’s system of racial segregation and minority white rule, as Botha demanded a year ago in his first offer to release Mandela.

The 67-year-old Mandela rejected the government’s terms both times, demanding unconditional release, and his continued imprisonment has become a major political problem for Botha’s white minority government.

South African officials suggested Friday that multilateral negotiations for Mandela’s release are already under way, hinting that the United States and European countries, which have long sought the freedom of Shcharansky and Sakharov, have already approached the Soviet Union about letting two of its most famous dissidents leave in return for Mandela’s release. Botha’s proposal was immediately denounced by black leaders, who demanded that Mandela simply be set free.

‘Looks Like Another Ploy’

“Big deal,” said Bishop Desmond Tutu, the 1984 Nobel Peace laureate. “What does Nelson’s release have to do with Sakharov? I can’t see why they are linked. It looks like another ploy that a politician has thought up.”

Winnie Mandela, wife of the imprisoned African National Congress leader, said through her lawyer that she would have no comment until today on Botha’s proposal.

Botha told Parliament: “I am conscious of the fact that Mr. Mandela has been in prison for a long time and that he is now in his 60s. I have given this matter much thought, and I stated last year that, in principle, I would be prepared to consider his release on humanitarian grounds.”

South Africa’s proposal was put to Western diplomats by South African Foreign Minister Roelof F. (Pik) Botha at a special briefing immediately after the president’s speech to Parliament, but several of the ambassadors who emerged from the meeting described the offer as bizarre and “a diplomatic fantasy.”