Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Friday left for Gambia to attend an African Union summit and ”might” meet United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan there, a top official said.
”When he [Mugabe] attends these meetings he will meet various heads of state on the sidelines of the summit and he might meet him [Annan],” acting Information Minister Paul Mangwana told Agence France-Presse.
The visit to Banjul by Mugabe comes two days after he attacked various ”so-called initiatives to rescue Zimbabwe”.
Saying these initiatives made it seem the country was about to ”perish”, Mugabe said: ”What Zimbabwe needs is just and lawful treatment by the western world … a recognition that it is a full, sovereign country, which has the right to own and control its resources, the right to chart its own destiny unhindered.”
The octogenarian leader, who has ruled the country since independence from British colonial rule in 1980, said his country has ”no saviours outside of its own people”.
He added: ”Is it not ironic that nations that are sustained by and depend on resources from our country dare talk about ‘saving’ us? Who is saving who, we ask? And which other country have these ‘great saviours’ rescued? Iraq? Afghanistan?”
Mugabe last year invited Annan to pay a visit to Zimbabwe after a UN envoy criticised his government’s demolitions campaign in which shacks, homes and shops were bulldozed, leaving hundreds of thousands homeless and without income.
Harare has over the past few months maintained that its invitation to the UN chief remained open, although Mugabe’s spokesperson George Charamba poured cold water on the visit, saying ”Zimbabwe is not a UN issue.” — Sapa-AFP