Zimbabwe’s Zanu-PF said political leaders did not need to invite former South African president Thabo Mbeki to mediate as there was no deadlock on power sharing, the state-run Herald said on Friday.
”We should learn to overcome our challenges, and as negotiating parties we feel that we should not find easy ways to avoid taking hard decisions,” said Zanu-PF chief negotiator Patrick Chinamasa, adding there was no need to continue ”abusing” Mbeki’s office.
The leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Morgan Tsvangirai, on Thursday denounced the ”deadlock” in talks with the ruling party on the composition of a new government.
He called on the intervention of the regional bloc, the Southern African Development Community, which mandated Mbeki, and the African Union (AU).
Since the power-sharing accord was signed on September 15 in Harare, Zanu-PF and the MDC have met several times without resolving the issue of allocation of ministries and government agencies.
The MDC says Mugabe’s Zanu-PF wants to take influential Cabinet portfolios such as defence, home affairs, finance and local government.
According to the Herald, negotiations were continuing and President Robert Mugabe is expected to meet on Friday with Tsvangirai and the head of the MDC splinter group, Arthur Mutambara.
But Tsvangirai’s MDC told Agence France-Presse (AFP) it was unaware of such a meeting.
”We have not received any correspondence to that effect,” the party spokesperson, Nelson Chamisa, said.
”I suppose Zanu-PF wants to validate its claim that there is no need for the intervention of the mediator,” he said.
Mbeki’s spokesperson, Makoni Ratshitanga, simply told AFP that ”he [Mbeki] has accepted that he is going to continue with the mediation efforts”, either in South Africa, in Harare or over the telephone.
Tsvangirai on Thursday insisted the deal to form a joint unity government could work, saying: ”We are confident about the potential of the deal. There is nothing wrong with the deal.”
”In the process of implementation, we have hit an impasse, but not on fundamental contents of the deal,” he added.
”We have declared a deadlock and therefore the process cannot move forward except in the presence of the facilitator … We have asked him to come over and he has said he will come over,” Tsvangirai said.
Tsvangirai defeated Mugabe in a first round of voting in March, but pulled out of a June run-off, citing deadly violence against his supporters. — Sapa-AFP