Zimbabwe’s opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, will not travel to a regional summit aimed at saving a power-sharing deal unless the government provides him with a passport, his spokesperson said Monday.
Tsvangirai, who is Zimbabwe’s prime minister designate, has not been granted a normal passport for months and requires emergency travel documents every time he leaves the country.
”He is not travelling to Mbabane until he has his passport,” George Sibotshiwe said.
Tsvangirai is boycotting the meeting of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in Swaziland’s capital after President Robert Mugabe’s government waited until the last minute on Sunday to issue him with an emergency travel document.
Sibotshiwe said Tsvangirai will not board a plane sent to fetch him in Zimbabwe without his passport.
George Charamba, Mugabe’s spokesperson, said the regional leaders were trying to convince Tsvangirai to come, and that Swaziland’s King Mswati III had sent his personal jet to Harare to pick him up.
”We are waiting for him and we think he will come. He was just playing hard to get,” Charamba said.
He also said that Tsvangirai, whose passport expired last year and was not renewed, had been given an emergency travel document ”because Zimbabwe is running out of paper for passports … because of sanctions”.
Arthur Mutambara, leader of an offshoot of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), said that arrangements had been made for a chartered jet to pick up Tsvangirai in Harare.
”He should be given a passport. It’s in violation of his rights,” he added.
Under the power-sharing deal signed five weeks ago, Mugabe (84) will remain as president while Tsvangirai takes the new post of prime minister.
However, Tsvangirai threatened to pull out of the deal after Mugabe announced that he would give his own party the most powerful Cabinet posts. — Sapa-AFP