5 November 2009
Maputo — Mozambican President Armando Guebuza on Thursday urged the leaders of Zimbabwe's three main political parties "to capitalize on the points that unite you, for the good of the people of Zimbabwe and of our entire region".
He was speaking at the start of a summit of the SADC (Southern African Development Community) troika on politics, defence and security cooperation, called mainly to discuss the latest crisis in Zimbabwe, where Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has pulled his faction of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) out of the government.
The MDC argues that the ruling ZANU-PF, of President Robert Mugabe, is not negotiating in good faith, and has failed to implement key parts of the Global Political Agreement (GPA) of September 2008.
Mugabe, Tsvangirai and Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara, of the minority MDC faction, are attending the summit. The troika currently consists of Mozambique, Swaziland and Zambia - Swaziland is represented by King Mswati III, and Zambia by its Defence Minister Kalombo Mwansa.
Also in attendance is the past chair of SADC, President Jacob Zuma of South Africa, but the current chair, Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is represented by the Congolese ambassador to South Africa.
Guebuza recalled that last month a ministerial delegation from the SADC troika had visited Lesotho and Zimbabwe to learn of "progress in the post-election political dialogue" in the former, and "the stage of implementation of the GPA" in the latter.
"Both in Lesotho and in Zimbabwe we are clearly aware of the existence of divergent points of view", he said, "but we are pleased to know that the parties are doing all in their power to overcome these differences".
"We would like to stress that the challenges are enormous, but they can be overcome", added Guebuza.
He hoped that the summit could obtain from the three Zimbabwean leaders "undertakings to continue working together to overcome the present challenges, always putting, as they have done, the national interest of the country in first place".
Guebuza said that everything should be done "to maintain political stability for the continued inflow of foreign investment needed to continue the relaunching of economic activity".
He was optimistic because the SADC mission to Zimbabwe had found "there are more points of convergence than disagreement".
Guebuza said that Mozambique remains convinced that challenges "can only be effectively resolved through cooperation between our governments and peoples. For us, SADC remains the most appropriate forum for dealing with the challenges affecting our region".
Meeting those challenges would establish the conditions "for successful implementation of joint development programmes to eradicate poverty".
The meeting then went into closed session, with the troika mediators meeting individually with each of the Zimbabwean leaders, before holding a further plenary session.
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