by Jack O'Sullivan
SOUTH AFRICA'S Catholic bishops will in January consider launching a campaign of civil disabedience following unsuccessful talks last month with President P W Botha.
Lawbreaking is "one of the big questions we will need to face, Bishop Wilfred Napier,vice president of the Southern Africa Catholic Bishops' Conference, said in London this week.
"It is a possibility and we will have to see in January whether it becomes a reality". said Bishop Napier.
His hierarchy has discussed tactics with the Vatican and the Pope has left the final choices to their descretion, he said.
Bishop Napier, said the bishops who met Pesident Botha received "utter discouragment". They were "deeply insulted" when he told delegation leader, Cardinal Owen McCann that he could leave if he wished, after the churchman said he did not like what the president was saying.
Bishop Napier, who is on a seven-nation European tour with a fellow bishop, urged the West to use its economic muscle against apartheid.
He said: "Economic pressures are the only remaining way of bringing about non-violent change in South Africa. Otherwise we see the only alternative is a bloodbath."
He welcomed the Barclays pullout as having a "deep psychological impact" on the country. He said South Africa's bishops support "ecomonic pressure" because the term embraces a wider range of action than "sanctions" and because it is illegal in South Africa to publicly advocate sanctions.
Knock-on effect: Barclays move, page three Quoting a township survey, Bishop Napier said that the banned African National Congress has most support among blacks, the majority of whom, he said,were in favour a negotiated settlement rather than a violent solution.
From meeting ANC leaders in the Zambian capital Lusaka, he had a picture of them as
"nationalists.