Archbishop Desmond Tutu says the African National Congress has done itself tremendous damage by trying to stop the publication of the Truth Commission report.

In the 3,500-page report, the ANC is held responsible for deaths and injuries during its time as an exiled movement trying to overthrow apartheid.

The chairman of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Archbishop Tutu says the ANC has damaged its international reputation and he is concerned by a party with such a large government majority acting to try to stop its electorate having access to information.

Reporting from Johannesburg, the BBC's Africa Correspondent, Jane Standley, says the respected Nobel peace prize winner's criticisms of the ANC will hit hard: she says that the criticisms are clearly meant for the younger generation of ANC leaders, who have been very hostile to the Commission's findings against them.

Archbishop Tutu is seen as a figure of morality and tolerance across the world.

He accused the ANC of tyranny in its last-minute bid to get a court order blocking findings that the party was responsible for gross violations of human rights in its fight against apartheid.

"The fact that they are the majority party in government does not give them privileges. I did not fight against people who thought they were God to replace them by others," Archbishop Tutu told journalists in Pretoria.

Thabo Mbeki: said commission should have listened to ANC

But the South African Deputy President and ANC President, Thabo Mbeki, criticised the commission for not heeding the ANC's objections to the report.

"This does not help the process for which the TRC was established," Mr Mbeki told reporters.

South Africa will hold its second all race elections next year and Thabo Mbeki is expected to become president as Nelson Mandela retires from politics.

The report, which calls for a national summit in 1999 on its recommendations, will "reawaken many of the difficult and troubling emotions that the hearings themselves brought," according to President Nelson Mandela.

Desmond Tutu's deputy, Alex Borraine, warned that reconciliation would take "a generation at least."

Mandela wants full disclosure

President Mandela and Archbishop Tutu celebrate the report's publication

The Truth Commission recommends that individuals who are found accountable for human rights violations, and who chose not to apply for amnesty, could face prosecution.

Former President PW Botha, Home Affairs Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi, and Winnie Mandela are among those who stand accused.

The ruling African National Congress is also blamed.

But it is the system of apartheid, condemned as a crime against humanity, which receives the harshest criticism from the TRC's report, which was presented to President Mandela on Thursday by commission chairman Archbishop Tutu.

And President Nelson Mandela publicly asked that the report should be published with everything in it, including the allegations against the ANC.

He is known to have argued in cabinet for full disclosure.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, after hearing testimony from over 21,000 victims of apartheid, completed its work on 31 July 1998, except for ongoing amnesty investigations, which will continue until next June.

More legal challenges

Blacked out: A section of report dealing with FW de Klerk

The handing over of the report was overshadowed by another legal bid to delay publication - by former President FW de Klerk.

Mr de Klerk won a temporary interdict preventing the publication of material linking him to state-sponsored bombings in the 1980s.

The report holds him accountable for killings during his time in office, a period when anti-apartheid resistance was met with increasingly brutal suppression.

Sections of the TRC document, which suggest that Mr de Klerk knew about the bombing plans but failed to report them, have been suppressed until the case is heard again in March.

Chief Buthelezi. Leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, former wife of the president, have also been implicated in apartheid-era murders.