Tony Blair pledged yesterday to stand firm against Zimbabwe at the Commonwealth summit which starts on Friday in the Nigerian city of Abuja.
The opening session was expected be dominated by a dispute about the suspension of Robert Mugabe’s regime from the organisation. President Mugabe has blamed his exclusion on a white ”unholy alliance” between Britain, Australia and New Zealand.
Speaking on his way to the summit, the prime minister said those who accused Britain of colonialism were ”defending the indefensible”.
He rejected the accusation of racism, and said that the UK wanted change for black people, who make up the majority of Mugabe’s victims, as well as for the white farmers who are being driven from their lands.
”This is nothing to do with old-fashioned colonialism. It is simply to do with regimes that don’t treat their people properly,” he said. ”The Commonwealth has got a limit to the power it can have, but it is far better that a signal is sent than it is not sent.”
The renewed tension about Mugabe’s regime was expected to trigger a challenge to a second term for the Commonwealth’s secretary general, the New Zealander Don McKinnon, who has taken a tough line on Zimbabwe’s excesses.
If he wins against the expected challenge from Lakshman Kadirgamar, a Sri Lankan diplomat, there will still be plenty of contentious debates on topics such as poverty, Aids and the stalled world trade talks. Gay Nigerians are reportedly threatening a demonstration against their own leadership, and the summit, which is taking place in a substantially Muslim state, is the subject of strong security measures to protect visiting VIPs.
But Zimbabwe remains the biggest issue. Mugabe, who threatened this week to leave the Commonwealth and form a new grouping, failed to get an invitation to Nigeria or to persuade fellow Africans to boycott the meeting. Foreign ministers rejected that option in Pretoria on Friday.
In a move that will further infuriate Mugabe, the ministers belonging to the Southern African Development Community agreed that other Commonwealth countries should try to persuade the Harare government to engage in constructive dialogue with opposition parties.
Mugabe has refused to negotiate with the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, and other civic organisations.
But he is not entirely friendless. Nigeria may not have invited him to the meeting, but the newly re-elected president, Olusegun Obasanjo, who welcomed the Queen this week on her first visit to the country since 1956, wants Zimbabwe readmitted to full membership, as does Thabo Mbeki, the president of South Africa, the continent’s other major sub-Saharan state. Other African states, including Zambia, back the Nigerian-South African contention that human rights abuses in Zimbabwe are easing, despite the recent closure of The Daily News, the country’s biggest independent newspaper, and the deepening humanitarian crisis. Zambia also backed Harare’s call to boycott the Commonwealth meeting.
But Blair and an uncertain majority at the four-day summit will insist that European Union, US and Commonwealth sanctions be maintained, if not increased.
The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, denies soft-peddling the Zimbabwe crisis which, Michael Ancram, his Tory shadow, says has ”grievously wounded” the Commonwealth by exposing its failure to deliver the democratic principles on which its rests.
Downing Street officials invoke the ”dialogue and discussion” traditions of the Commonwealth heads of government meeting, a more gentle type of summit that reflects a diverse group with 1,7-billion citizens — a third of the world’s population.
Blair will leave Abuja before the end of the meeting for family reasons.
Zimbabwe will run out of the staple maize grain by January unless the government makes an urgent appeal for more aid, Renson Gasela, shadow agriculture minister for the Movement for Democratic Change, said yesterday. Aid agencies say 5,5-million people – more than a third of the population – will need food aid by the end of the year. – Guardian Unlimited Â