29 November 2007
Harare — Southern African states will not allow the crisis in Zimbabwe to be discussed at next month's controversial European Union (EU)-Africa summit in Lisbon, the Southern African regional organisation has declared.
"SADC (the Southern African Development Community, the 14-nation regional bloc) will not accept to come to Lisbon to discuss Zimbabwe because the summit is not about Zimbabwe but about relations between the EU and Africa," Zimbabwe's state-controlled Herald daily newspaper quoted SADC executive director Tomaz Salomao as saying.
Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, whose presence at the summit is at the centre of months of angry disputes between members of the EU and African states, also confirmed he would be at the summit on December 8-9.
"Yes, I'm going," he said, while on a visit to Mozambique this week. Portugal repeated its hope that he would not attend, because his presence would distract attention from key issues of trade and aid development.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said neither he nor any senior British government minister would attend if Mugabe came.
The last EU summit was held in Cairo, Egypt, in 2000, but attempts to convene again were abandoned because of disputes over Mugabe, who is accused of human rights abuses and reckless economic policies that have demolished what was Africa's second-most robust economy.
The Herald also quoted Salomao as insisting that western "sanctions" against Zimbabwe be lifted. "The sanctions are damaging the economy in Zimbabwe although Europe does not want to accept that," he said.
"They prefer to call them 'targeted sanctions,' but for us they are sanctions and our approach has been to have them lifted."
After 2000, when Mugabe launched a campaign of repression against a new pro-democracy opposition and began the violent invasion of 5-million hectares of mostly white-owned farms, the EU, US, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Switzerland imposed "targeted" sanctions barring senior members of Mugabe's ruling elite from travelling to, or investing in, their countries.
Independently, nearly all western governments have stopped bilateral government-to-government aid to Zimbabwe because, they said, their money was either corruptly abused or squandered by Mugabe's regime, or because it failed to repay development loans.
The International Monetary Fund cancelled lending to Zimbabwe in 1998 when it discovered that Mugabe had diverted development loans to pay for the Zimbabwean army fighting in the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Western governments continue to deliver emergency aid in the form of food or medicines. About 4-million people are due to be fed by the United Nations in the next few months following the collapse of the agricultural system.
Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade arrived in Harare yesterday in a bid to defuse tension between Harare and London . Sapa-DPA-AFP
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