The European Union’s policy on Zimbabwe was in disarray last night as foreign ministers failed to agree on a new package of sanctions because of a row over France’s controversial invitation to Robert Mugabe to attend a summit in Paris.
In Zimbabwe, the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said more than 1 000 of his supporters had been tortured in the past year by the Mugabe regime, and called for an investigation by the UN, Commonwealth and Interpol.
His Movement for Democratic Change said it was ”frustrated and disappointed”, by the EU’s failure to agree further sanctions.
The EU’s visa ban, assets freeze and other punitive measures imposed on Zimbabwe’s president and his top aides last year are due to expire next month, but have become embroiled in angry disagreements and recriminations.
George Papandreou, foreign minister of Greece, the current holder of the EU’s presidency, said after what diplomats called a ”difficult” meeting in Brussels that another attempt would have to be made to forge consensus. EU ambassadors are expected to meet on the issue later this week.
He warned that an EU-Africa summit, scheduled for Lisbon in April, might not go ahead.
Britain and five other member states warned that they will not send their heads of government to Lisbon if Mugabe is invited. Several African countries have said they will not attend if the Zimbabwean leader is absent.
The crisis over the EU’s so-called ”smart” sanctions has come to a head over France’s decision to invite Mugabe to a Franco-African summit in Paris on February 19, a day after the measures are due to expire.
France came under fire for breaking ranks with its partners, but if any of its critics had objected, Paris would have blocked the renewal of the sanctions, which must be agreed unanimously.
”The important thing is to ensure that we have the sanctions and continue to make clear our disapproval about the way the Mugabe regime works,” one diplomat said.
Officials said a possible compromise was for future sanctions to be governed by majority voting if a country sought an exemption.
France says it wants to discuss democracy and human rights with the Zimbabwean leader. Dominique de Villepin, the French foreign minister, said the measures should be interpreted ”flexibly”.
The sanctions were imposed last year in protest against elections that the EU and the US branded unfair and illegitimate. They were also in response to the confiscation of white-owned farms and the crackdown on the independent press, the judiciary and the opposition.
Anna Lindh, Sweden’s foreign minister, said: ”It gives a very strange signal if the EU is having sanctions against Zimbabwe and at the same time is inviting Mugabe, even if it is one country inviting him to a special conference.”
Glenys Kinnock, the British Labour MEP, said: ”The future of EU sanctions has now been thrown into a melting pot which threatens the very survival of those sanctions.”
The whole episode has shown the EU at its most ineffective, conducting laborious negotiations to agree a common policy only to have individual member states seek exceptions.
The United States has already called the French invitation regrettable and urged the EU to enforce the travel ban against Mugabe and his close associates.
In Zimbabwe, Tsvangirai said the spate of regime-led violence had resulted in some 30 political murders in the country between January and November 2002.
”Our leaders are arrested, often on trumped-up charges, in order to torture them,” he told a news conference. ”A number of MDC party functionaries have been tortured and subsequently died as a result.”
Amnesty Interational and Zimbabwe’s Human Rights Forum have also reported an alarming rise in cases of torture in Zimbabwe. They said police stepped up torture of opposition members, including four members of parliament, in an effort to crush dissent ahead of the cricket World Cup matches to be played in Zimbabwe, and forthcoming diplomatic efforts to resolve Zimbabwe’s political and economic crisis.
The calls follow the torture allegations by an opposition MP, Job Sikhala, and his lawyer, Gabriel Shumba. – Guardian Unlimited Â