/ 26 January 2009

Regional leaders meet to tackle Zim crisis

Regional leaders met the Zanu-PF and the MDC at a summit in SA on Monday to try to push them to implement a Zimbabwe power-sharing deal.

Regional leaders met Zanu-PF leader Robert Mugabe and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) at a summit in South Africa on Monday to try to push them to implement a Zimbabwe power-sharing deal that has been stalled for months.

The agreement is seen as a chance to prevent an economic collapse that could put added strain on neighbours that already host millions of Zimbabweans who fled in search of work and, more recently, to escape a deadly cholera epidemic.

According to an MDC official, the summit had made no progress.

The official said the 15-member Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit had not persuaded the rivals to implement the power-sharing deal signed last September.

”We are worlds apart. If we were [inches] apart, we are now miles apart,” the MDC official told Reuters.

Mugabe and MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai signed the agreement in September but have failed to agree on control of Cabinet posts, with neither side showing any sign of compromise.

”Questions concerning Zimbabwe are continuously being raised in capitals and streets of Africa, with the expectation that the Zimbabwean leadership of all persuasions, under the aegis of SADC, will resolutely resolve the impasse with decisiveness and statesmanship,” South African President Kgalema Motlanthe told the summit. ”I trust that we will not fail them.”

Mugabe, in power since 1980, and his Zanu-PF party have urged the MDC to join a unity government but say they will not hesitate to form one without them.

Mugabe is expected to seek approval from regional leaders at the summit in Pretoria to form a government alone if need be.

Western leaders want Mugabe to step down and are pushing for a democratic government to embrace economic reforms before billions of dollars in aid is offered, but he has resisted their calls through several rounds of negotiations.

In Brussels, the European Union stepped up pressure on him on Monday by adding 27 individuals and 36 firms to a sanctions list and calling for a probe into Harare’s diamond industry, EU officials said.

Last chance
A Zimbabwean deputy minister billed Monday’s summit as the last chance for rescuing the power-sharing pact, viewed as the best hope for averting total meltdown in Zimbabwe, where prices double every day and cholera has killed nearly 2 900 people since August.

”The way forward soon after this summit, whether there is an agreement or there is no agreement, President Mugabe is going to form a Cabinet,” Deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga told South African public broadcaster SAfm.

He said Mugabe would try to leave room for Tsvangirai if he decided to change his mind, but not for long.

Tsvangirai says Zanu-PF is trying to sideline him and wants control of powerful ministries such as home affairs. He says no deal is possible unless party activists are released from jail.

Zambia and Botswana have taken tough lines but other countries in the bloc favour a more diplomatic approach with Mugabe, who they still revere as a liberation hero.

Botswana’s President, Seretse Khama Ian Khama, one of Mugabe’s toughest critics, was to attend the summit after boycotting one in August.

Without a political settlement, it is unlikely sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe’s leadership by Western countries will be lifted. — Reuters