The European Union is putting off a fully fledged summit with African countries because it cannot find a way of excluding the Zimbabwean leader, Robert Mugabe.
EU ambassadors meeting in Brussels yesterday decided that the Lisbon summit, originally scheduled for April 5, would have to be postponed indefinitely.
”In the present circumstances it would not be possible to achieve the broadest participation at the highest-level by both sides,” a statement said. ”It would therefore be in the best interests of EU-African relations to postpone the summit.”
The decision coincided with the long-delayed renewal of EU sanctions against the Mugabe regime, targeted because of democratic and human rights abuses, the seizure of white farms and a crackdown on the media.
The punitive measures were rolled over only after weeks of embarrassing public disarray in Europe.
The price was reluctant acquiescence in a controversial visit by the Zimbabwean president to a Franco-African summit in Paris next week.
President Jacques Chirac had insisted that the invitation was justified because of the need for dialogue with Mugabe.
But his many critics, including a furious Tony Blair, said he was making a mockery of EU attempts to forge a common foreign policy.
France made clear, however, that it would block the renewal of the sanctions if it did not get its way.
The measures include a visa ban on Mugabe, and some 70 of his ministers and senior aides, a freeze on their financial assets, and an arms embargo.
Greece, holder of the EU’s rotating presidency, made a last-ditch effort to salvage the Lisbon summit by seeking a guarantee that Mugabe would stay away.
But with several African countries, led by South Africa and Nigeria calling for an end to Commonwealth sanctions against Zimbabwe, this was always a fairly slim prospect.
Several EU member states, led by Britain, had threatened to boycott the Lisbon meeting if the Zimbabwean leader attended. But African states made clear they would refuse to attend if Mugabe was not invited.
Diplomats said that EU was anxious to maintain dialogue with its African partners but insisted it was up to them to ensure that the Zimbabwean president did not attend.
Issues such as African economic reform, governance and debt relief can also be handled in the forum of the G8 group of the world’s leading industrial countries.
Mugabe’s visit to Paris next week has been roundly condemned in advance, especially as he will be accompanied by his wife Grace, who is reportedly keen to spend lavishly in the city’s finest shops while seven million people face starvation at home.
Peter Tatchell, the gay activist, has pledged to try to have the Zimbabwean leader arrested on charges of torture under a UN convention which forms part of French law.
”If Slobodan Milosevic can be put on trial for human rights abuses, why can’t Robert Mugabe?” he said.
Tatchell has made similar attempts to arrest Mr Mugabe in London and Brussels. Glenys Kinnock, the Labour MEP, is demanding that the existing sanctions be extended to deny Zimbabwe’s elite and their families, and that the right of residence and education in EU member states should also apply to business people collaborating with the ruling Zanu-PF party.
As a result of the wrangling over the extension of the sanctions, the EU will from now on agree to allow exemptions to be granted by a majority of the 15 member states rather than under the current system of unanimity. – Guardian Unlimited Â