House votes to lift travel curbs on Mandela

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Moving to fix what some lawmakers called an embarrassing leftover in U.S. policy, the House of Representatives on Thursday voted to scrap travel restrictions on former South African President Nelson Mandela and others in his anti-apartheid party.

Lawmakers said it was astonishing this was not done earlier. The apartheid era might be history, but U.S. laws blacklisting Mandela and others who fought South Africa's former system of racial segregation were "frozen in time," said Rep. Howard Berman, a California Democrat.

The measure must pass the Senate before it can become law. A companion bill was introduced there this week by Sen. John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat.

Mandela still has to get a special waiver to enter the United States as do other members of the African National Congress, which is now the ruling party in South Africa.

Berman's legislation, which passed the House on a voice vote and has the Bush administration's support, removes the ANC from treatment as a terrorist organization.

The legislation also would give officials authority to determine that some criminal activities that otherwise keep people out of the United States do not apply if they were undertaken in opposition to apartheid rule in South Africa.

The laws blacklisting the ANC were an embarrassing remnant of Washington's "much too cozy" relationship with the former apartheid government of South Africa, said Berman, who chairs the House International Affairs Committee.

"Despite recognizing two decades ago that America's place was on the side of those oppressed by apartheid, Congress has never resolved the inconsistency in our immigration code that treats many of those who actively opposed apartheid in South Africa as terrorists and criminals, in part because the apartheid regime labeled them as such," he told the House earlier this week.

Increasingly stringent security measures passed by Congress after the attacks of September 11, 2001 preserved the ANC's "terrorist" label because it had used armed force as part of its campaign against apartheid, Berman said.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said last month she wanted to end the travel restrictions on Mandela, who won a Nobel Peace Prize, and others from his party.

The ANC was banned by the South African apartheid government in 1960, its leaders jailed or forced into exile until the ban on the movement was lifted 30 years later.

Mandela, who spearheaded the struggle against apartheid and has become a symbol of freedom worldwide, was released from jail after 27 years in 1990 and later became the country's first post-apartheid-era president.

(Reporting by Susan Cornwell, editing by Vicki Allen)