JOHANNESBURG - Former president F.W. de Klerk yesterday rejected an interpretation of the minutes of a security council meeting in the mid1980s as a coded signal to security forces to murder antiapartheid activists, writes Patrick Laurence. The suggestion was made during a hearing of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Mr De Klerk, who was a member of the security council during the presidency of P.W. Botha, vehemently denied the deduction that he may thus have sanctioned the murder of political opponents seeking to end white hegemony. "I am telling the commission and the country that I have not been part of a decision that authorised that. I could not live with such a decision."