CAPE TOWN, South Africa -- Former President F.W. de Klerk, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Nelson Mandela for his role in dismantling apartheid, resigned Tuesday as leader of the party that created it.
Pragmatic to the end, de Klerk said he is quitting politics to give his party a chance to regroup before the 1999 elections.
Divided and in disarray, the party now is trying to stay alive in a drastically changed political landscape.
Party officials said the 61-year-old de Klerk would stay on until a new leader is chosen on Sept. 9.
When he became president in 1989, De Klerk was widely viewed as a moderate expected to protect apartheid. Instead, he declared soon after taking office that ''white domination will have to disappear, otherwise there will never be peace in South Africa.''
De Klerk immediately began to dismantle apartheid laws. Within a year, he legalized 60 anti-apartheid groups, including the now-governing African National Congress, whose leader, Nelson Mandela, was elected president in 1994.
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