Leaders from Britain’s former colonies convened on Monday to review the Commonwealth’s six-month-old sanctions against Zimbabwe’s increasingly isolated government, which dismissed the summit as a ”circus” bent on further censuring President Robert Mugabe.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard, South African President Thabo Mbeki and their Nigerian host, President Olusegun Obasanjo, entered closed-door talks on Monday morning at a hotel in the capital, Abuja. The meeting were expected to end later in the day.
Australia leads the so-called ”troika” of nations formed by the Commonwealth of Britain and 53 former colonies to coordinate actions against Zimbabwe after presidential elections in March that were widely seen as rigged.
Zimbabwe Information Minister Jonathan Moyo was quoted on Monday as saying by Zimbabwe’s state-run daily, The Herald, that Australia, backed by Britain, was conspiring against Zimbabwe’s leaders at the meeting.
Mugabe’s government had been invited to the meeting by Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who sent an invitation hand-delivered by diplomats, Australian officials said. Yet Zimbabwean officials insisted Mugabe never received the invitation. ”No serious person expected us to be part of that kind of circus,” Moyo was quoted by the newspaper as saying.
Howard said on Sunday that Mugabe’s failure to attend showed his ”indifference” to the Commonwealth and its troika. He declined to speculate what further actions could be taken against Zimbabwe, but stressed he did not ”want to hurt the people of Zimbabwe.”
”Clearly Zimbabwe is a deeply troubled and weakened and sad country. There’s no doubt about that,” Howard said. ”But I have particular focus in relation to my responsibilities for the Commonwealth and I just want to stay on that for the time being.”
Obasanjo said on Sunday that he was not disappointed with Mugabe’s rebuttal, although ”it would have made our job easier if he had been here.”
Obasanjo said the talks were crucial in addressing growing hunger in rural parts of Zimbabwe ”as a result of drought,” along with Zimbabwe’s growing land crisis.
The Commonwealth suspended Zimbabwe from its decision-making councils for a year in March after the southern African nation’s presidential elections were declared unfair by several international and local monitoring groups.
The European Union, the United States and Switzerland have imposed limited travel and investment sanctions against Mugabe’s top government officials.
Zimbabwe is suffering its worst economic crisis since independence in 1980, with more than half of its 12,5-million people facing starvation in the face of food shortages aggravated by unrest and a drought.
Zimbabwe has been wracked by more than two years of political and economic turmoil, marked by a violent crackdown against the opposition and government efforts to seize 5 000 white-owned farms for redistribution to blacks.
In a statement on Monday, Zimbabwe’s main opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai urged the Commonwealth team to ”pressurise Mugabe to step down” and allow new elections to be held.
If Mugabe refuses, the Commonwealth should ”respond to such overt intransigence” by extending Zimbabwe’s suspension indefinitely, Tsvangirai said.
”Zimbabweans have suffered enough under Mugabe, it is time to end the suffering and time for Mugabe and his illegitimate regime to step down and allow the people of Zimbabwe the freedom to select a leader and government of their choice,” Tsvangirai said. – Sapa-AP