OWN CORRESPONDENT and BUCHIZYA MSETEKA, United Nations | Wednesday
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has given Zimbabwe conditional support for its controversial land reform programme, saying Harare must settle differences over the issue with former colonial power Britain.
Annan met Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and three other African leaders – Bakili Muluzi of Malawi, Sam Nujoma of Namibia and Thabo Mbeki of South Africa – at the UN headquarters in New York where a Millennium Summit is underway.
African diplomats at the summit said the talks were called at the request of African leaders seeking to end Zimbabwe’s international isolation over the violent land reform policy.
Mugabe’s land reform policy, spearheaded by violent self-styled veterans of Zimbabwe’s 1970s war of liberation, has put the former British colony on a collision course with the international community.
At the end of the talks, Annan gave guarded support and urged Mugabe to reopen dialogue with London and other lifeblood Western donors over funding for land redistribution.
A UN statement said Annan and the African leaders ”recognised the urgent need for such land reform as well as the sovereign responsibility of Zimbabwe to implement a credible programme.”
The statement said the five men also ”recognised the responsibility of the international community to assist the government.”
Diplomats said the talks were a partial coup for Mugabe and gave him a decent way out of a crippling economic and political crisis facing his southern African nation.
In an effort to keep the momentum going, Mbeki later took both Mugabe and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to dinner with a small selected group of nine other Commonwealth heads of state. It was the first time Mugabe and Blair, who have frosty relations, had met since November last year.
Mugabe plans to acquire nearly half the 12m ha owned by white farmers to resettle peasants as redress for the seizure of land by British colonists more than a century ago. – Reuters