Lawyers for opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said Friday they were trying to secure his passport, confiscated by the state last year, to allow him to travel to Malawi next week.
The Movement for Democratic Change leader wants to meet Malawian President Bakili Muluzi over the stalemate do discuss the stalemate in talks with President Robert Mugabe’s government.
Tsvangirai was approached by Muluzi the day after he visited Zimbabwe with South African president Thabo Mbekei and Nigerian president-elect Olusegun Obasanjo in an attempt to bring the MDC and Mugabe’s ruling Zanu(PF) party to negotiations aimed at ending the country’s crisis.
However, he can only go if he gets back his passport, confiscated since last year when he was indicted for trial on charges of plotting to assassinate Mugabe.
Tsvangirai’s attorney, Innocent Chagonda, said on Friday he was applying to the high court for the release of the passport.
The application would include Welshman Ncube, secretary-general of Tsvangirai’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change, who is a co-accused in his trial, and party vice-president Gibson Sibanda, facing charges of helping to organise a national strike in March last month.
The MDC wants the two officials to accompany Tsvangirai to Malawi, but they also had their passports seized after criminal proceedings were opened against them.
William Bango, Tsvangirai’s representative, said the pro-democracy leader had been invited by the Malawi high commissioner in Harare on Tuesday, the day after the three African leaders’ visit.
Expectations that the three would lean on the 79-year-old Mugabe to relinquish his 23-year grip on power evaporated when he said he would not talk to Tsvangirai unless he withdrew the MDC’s court challenge to Mugabe’s widely disputed victory in presidential elections last year.
Chagonda said the meeting with Muluzi in Lilongwe was provisionally scheduled for Friday next week, and Tsvangirai planned to leave Zimbabwe on Thursday.
Tsvangirai’s treason trial resumes on Monday, and Chagonda said he would apply for the hearing to be postponed on Thursday and Friday to allow Tsvangirai and Ncube to travel to Malawi.
The two, as well as MDC agriculture secretary Renson Gasela, have pleaded not guilty but face the death penalty if convicted. – Sapa-DPA