A third term of office for President Thabo Mbeki has never been posed within the African National Congress, ANC secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe asserted yesterday.

He was responding to a letter to Mbeki sent by Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon, seeking clarity on the matter.

Last week, Leon said former president Nelson Mandela "has already seen fit to declare publicly that he is sure" that Mbeki would not change the Constitution to enable him to serve a third term as president.

"But the president himself has refused to say".

The only way to dispel these rumours was for Mbeki himself to declare he would step down at the end of his next term, should he be inaugurated after this election was over, Leon said.

The DA leader said he had written to Mbeki on Friday to ask about his stance on the issue.

In a letter to Leon yesterday, Motlanthe said: "This matter of your letter was raised among the officials of the ANC, and, given the nature of its content, I was instructed to respond.

"Contrary to your assertion, the matter to which you refer was never mooted by (former) president Mandela. He was responding to a concern expressed to him that we might take a decision to extend the term of office of the president. He dismissed this concern unequivocally," he said.

Any decision by the ANC to propose a change to any important provision in the Constitution would be taken by the senior organs of ANC, and not by the president.

"Such a decision would have to involve at least our National Executive Committee.

"The matter you raise, of the length of tenure of office of the president, has never arisen within our organisation ever since the Constitution was adopted. We have received no indication that this issue will be tabled at any time in the future".

Neither the ANC nor the president had raised the matter either publicly or privately.

"Other people, evidently including you, have spoken about this issue. We have no power to stop you or anybody else from discussing this or any other issue.

"But we will not be party to your gratuitous efforts to derive some sort of political mileage from something that is to all intents and purposes a non-issue," Motlanthe said.

However, in a statement later yesterday, DA constitutional affairs spokesperson Tertius Delport said Motlanthe had left the door open to a third term for Mbeki.

"Motlanthe failed to give a direct answer to a very simple and direct question: will you, President Mbeki, change the Constitution and seek a third term? "Instead, Motlanthe gave added weight to public concern by suggesting that the ANC National Executive Committee could, in the future, propose changes to the Constitution that would allow the president to stand again," he said. – Sapa.