The Commonwealth is threatening to split along racial lines over the continuing controversy of whether the organisation should extend Zimbabwe’s suspension.
The Australian prime minister, John Howard, said he will press for Zimbabwe’s suspension to be renewed, despite opposition from South Africa and Nigeria, fellow members in a special troika formed last year to determine policy towards Zimbabwe.
Howard said the South African president, Thabo Mbeki, telephoned him to say that he and the Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, want to cancel a meeting set for next month because they disagreed with Howard’s view that Zimbabwe’s suspension should be extended.
The three leaders were to have met in Pretoria in March to review the suspension of Zimbabwe, imposed last year after President Robert Mugabe was re-elected in a vote that the Commonwealth’s observer mission found to be marked by state-sponsored violence and voting fraud.
Howard said Zimbabwe had done nothing to warrant being re-admitted to Commonwealth. “If anything the situation appears to have deteriorated and I certainly wouldn’t be supporting any notion that Zimbabwe should be readmitted to full membership,” he said, according to a transcript of his remarks released in Canberra.
These comments, made by Howard to reporters during a visit to Washington, have irritated Mbeki, who with Nigeria has been preparing for Zimbabwe to be re-admitted.
Mbeki’s representative said that the South African president “regrets very much that the prime minister [Howard] has publicly made these remarks”. Howard said he would write to all the other members of the Commonwealth to recommend Zimbabwe’s suspension remain in force until a full meeting of the group in Nigeria in December. – Guardian Unlimited Â