GRIFFIN SHEA, Harare | Wednesday
ZIMBABWE will not cooperate with a fact-finding diplomatic mission from the Commonwealth on alleged government intimidation of judges and the media, says Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge.
“This is an unprocedural request. They have no mandate for the mission they want to send,” Mudenge said of the mission. “We will not participate in illegality and unprocedural methods of operating.”
A Commonwealth action group agreed earlier this week to send the foreign ministers of Australia, Barbados and Nigeria on a fact-finding diplomatic mission to Zimbabwe.
Although Zimbabwe had not been on the official agenda of the Commonwealth ministerial action group (CMAG) meeting in London, Britain put forward the proposal for a diplomatic mission.
Britain, as the country’s former colonial power, has led harsh criticism of President Robert Mugabe and his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), which last year narrowly won general elections, defeating a newly formed opposition party.
“While the government of Zimbabwe is happy to receive any foreign minister from the Commonwealth, and any other part of the world for that matter wishing to visit our country, it will not comply with the British diktat,” Mudenge said.
British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook earlier said in London that the CMAG decision was the “top of the ladder” in terms of a response by the action group.
Cook added “that this was a unanimous agreement and therefore President Robert Mugabe cannot now continue to pretend that it is only Britain who is criticising him.”
The action group asked for Zimbabwe’s full cooperation so the mission could take place as soon as possible, but this appeal met with a blunt response from Mudenge.
Instead of dispatching emissaries to Harare, CMAG should send its mission to London to persuade the British government to honour its commitment … to help with the funding of the land resettlement program in Zimbabwe,” he said.
Zimbabwe’s government has embarked on a controversial and violence-wracked land reform scheme, which aims to resettle poor black farmers on five million hectares of white-owned farmland.
All the donor nations which had agreed to support the program have pulled out, citing concerns over the rule of law and the politically charged violence. – AFP
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