Washington — Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano said in Washington on Thursday that the Zimbabwean crisis is almost solved thanks to mediation by the leaders of SADC (Southern African Development Community) countries with the parties in dispute.

Speaking at a meeting with American business people, Chissano made it clear that he believed the political disputes in Zimbabwe have been almost overcome.

After sketching a brief history of Zimbabwe from colonial times, Chissano said that, just as in the past, Zimbabweans were showing that they have now reached agreement, and will resolve their dispute peacefully. "I don't mean that the solution will be similar to that of previous crises", he said, "but I can assure you that we are near to a solution, and if I don't tell you any more, it is only so that I don't damage what has indeed been achieved".

He denied claims that the Zimbabwean situation was "explosive". as some American politicians had claimed.

Chissano was convinced that sooner rather than later an agreement between the Zimbabwean government and opposition would be known to the rest of the world. If this does indeed occur, it would be a triumph for the "quiet diplomacy" followed by SADC leaders in their approach to Zimbabwe, and which Chissano and South African President Thabo Mbeki always believed would be more effective than ultimata and "selective sanctions" imposed by the US or the European Union.

Chissano said he believed all those who claimed that he, and other SADC leaders, were doing nothing, or not enough, to solve the Zimbabwean problem. were simply wrong. For those critics, regional leaders should have adopted measures of persuasion or coercion against Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.

"It has been common for those outside our region to show that they do not understand very well what is going on between us and amongst us, and much less about the complexity and delicacy of our problems, as in the case of Zimbabwe", continued Chissano.

"But I should tell you that when a problem arises in one of our countries, we sit down and discuss it seriously and very frankly, in a spirit of mutual assistance, but without making any impositions. For we might even be wrong in our vision of the same problem".

Chissano spoke of his understanding of recent Zimbabwean history, describing Robert Mugabe was the man who had worked "a miracle" in uniting the two major Zimbabwean factions of the time ZANU (Zimbabwe African National Union) and ZAPU (Zimbabwean African People's Union) into a single force, today's ZANU-PF.

An aged African-American academic, now in his 80s, Elliott P. Skinner, who had once been a colleague in the United Nations in New York of the founder of Frelimo, Eduardo Mondlane, supported Chissano He said there was often a superficial or distorted approach to the problems of Africa, and of Zimbabwe in particular. He found it amazing that attempts were now made to crucify mugabe, who not only fought for the independence of his country, but suffered terrible injustices at the hands of a white minority regime, whose leader (Ian Smith) is still alive.

Skinner recalled that decades ago, he too did not understand Africa well. He recalled lengthy discussions with Mondlane, during one of which Mondlane told him "If you Americans don't understand me, and don't give me the help I need to free my country, I will end up going to Moscow".

Chissano recalled that after the foundation of Frelimo in 1962, Mondlane secured some support from the US Ford Foundation for Frelimo's educational programme. He was pragmatic enough to stay aloof from the Sino-Soviet split, and so managed to receive from both the USSR and China the weapons Frelimo needed for its independence war.

At that time, Chissano said, Mondlane turned to Moscow and Peking precisely because the only aid he could secure from Americans was in the educational field. He recalled that Mondlane's friendly relations with Americans, and the fact that he married a white American, led to accusations from his enemies that he must be "a CIA agent".

At the same meeting, the editor of "New African" magazine asked Chissano who had killed his predecessor, Samora Machel.

Chissano replied that, although he was not a judge, the tripartite factual inquiry into the plane crash that killed Machel, undertaken by the Mozambican, South African and Soviet governments, indicated that the main suspect was the South African apartheid government.

He recalled that the cockpit voice recorder of the doomed aircraft showed that, when the plane made its fatal turn to the south-west, the captain queried this. The navigator then replied that the plane was following the signal from a VOR (a standard navigational aid). Clearly the crew believed they were following the Maputo airport VOR: the general theory in Maputo, however, is that a decoy VOR was used by the assassins, broadcasting on the same frequency as the Maputo VOR, and luring the plane away from its correct flight path. What deepened suspicions, Chissano added, was that the South Africans unilaterally declared that the tripartite inquiry was over, when the Mozambicans and Soviets thought that many questions remained unanswered including the origin of the VOR signal the plane was following.

The South Africans had also never explained the presence of large numbers of beer and coca-cola cans near the site of the crash, all of which appeared to have been drunk recently. One possible source for the drinks could have been a makeshift military camp in the vicinity. But the South Africans refused to say whether any military training had been going on nearby.

"So right up to today, we continue to ask the same question: Who killed Samora ?", said Chissano.