Zimbabwe faced the prospect of greater international isolation on Monday after President Robert Mugabe refused to attend a meeting here of Commonwealth leaders who could strengthen sanctions on his troubled country.
Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo, South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki and Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard ? the Commonwealth ”troika” on Zimbabwe — are expected to have harsh words about Mugabe’s regime.
They are frustrated that since the 57-nation body suspended Zimbabwe’s membership of its diplomatic committees in March this year there has been no sign that Mugabe is ready to address concerns about human rights and democracy.
Mugabe’s domestic opposition still faces oppression and violence and a campaign to forcibly evict white farmers and seize their land has continued and gathered pace, despite international criticism.
At the weekend, in a further sign of defiance, Mugabe made a last minute decision to snub the three leaders, whose invitation to the Abuja meeting he had previously accepted.
”I think it reinforces the fact that he’s indifferent to the views of Australia and South Africa and Nigeria and that’s relevant in our considerations,” Howard said.
The meeting will, however, go ahead as planned, and Commonwealth officials said that the prospect of tougher sanctions — perhaps a full suspension of Zimbabwe’s membership — was on the table.
All the delegations were careful, however, to insist that no decisions had been taken in advance of the meeting, which will examine the situation in Zimbabwe six months after Commonwealth sanctions were imposed.
”The situation in Zimbabwe is very important. The situation cannot be allowed to continue indefinitely,” Obasanjo said after a meeting with Howard at his official Abuja residence, Aso Rock.
Obasanjo said the troika was most concerned about the ”humanitarian issues” arising from Mugabe’s policy of throwing white farmers off their land and from his handling of a catastrophic drought that has brought millions to the brink of starvation.
In Harare, officials were unrepentant, and claimed that Howard’s letter of invitation to Mugabe had been an inappropriate message to a head of state.
In a newspaper interview Jonathan Moyo, Zimbabwe’s Minister of State for Information and Publicity, derided the meeting as ”a monumental waste of time.”
The troika suspended Zimbabwe’s membership of the organisation’s ruling structures in March after a violent, disputed election and amid a violent campaign to evict commercial farmers, mainly whites, and seize their land.
”You’ve got to remember what this all goes back to. It goes back to a rorted (sic) election and that’s what people are concerned about,” Howard said, using an Australian term for badly fouled up.
”It was a perfectly normal and formal and courteous invitation.”
Under the current suspension, Zimbabwe is barred from Commonwealth heads of government meetings and ministerial meetings such as the foreign ministers’ meeting at the United Nations earlier this month.
Now it could face full suspension from the body: missing out on Commonwealth technical assistance for its development, losing its officials at the Commonwealth secretariat and missing the next Commonwealth Games.
”He wanted to talk about the background to the farm invasions, to explain himself,” said one Commonwealth official. ”But when he saw what we planned to talk about he realised that wasn’t going to be it.” – Sapa-AFP