Rice wants to end travel curb on Mandela and ANC

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Wednesday she wanted to end "embarrassing" U.S. travel restrictions on former South African President Nelson Mandela and his African National Congress.

Mandela, who was on a U.S. blacklist during the apartheid years, still has to get a special waiver to enter the United States as do other members of the ANC, which is now the ruling party in South Africa.

Rice told U.S. lawmakers it was time to remove travel restrictions on Mandela, a former Nobel Peace Prize winner and liberation hero, and others from his party.

"I really do hope we can remove these restrictions on the ANC. This is a country with which we now have excellent relations -- South Africa," said Rice, who gave no timeline for the move.

"It is frankly a rather embarrassing matter that I still have to waive in my own counterparts -- the foreign minister of South Africa, not to mention the great leader, Nelson Mandela," she added.

Republican Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, described the restrictions as a "bureaucratic snafu."

"Even Nelson Mandela has to go through a clearing process before he can come to the United States. We need to work on this and I hope you can give us some direction on how to straighten this out," he told Rice.

California Rep. Howard Berman, a Democrat who chairs the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, introduced legislation last week to remove the ANC from any U.S. government databases that labeled the movement and its leaders as "terrorists."

The legislation, supported by the Bush administration, would require ANC members to be taken off all travel and terrorism watchlists.

"What an indignity. This legislation will wipe it away," Berman said in a statement last week.

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 Sue Pleming; Editing by Eric Walsh)