/ 31 October 2007

Europe, Africa struggle with Mugabe obstacle to summit

European Union and African ministers met in Accra, Ghana, on Wednesday to decide whether to risk a diplomatic storm by inviting Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe to an EU-Africa summit.

Britain has said it will boycott the proposed summit in Lisbon on December 8 and 9 if Mugabe attends. Some African nations have said they will stay away if the Zimbabwean leader is not invited.

Portugal would host the summit as current president of the EU and its Foreign Minister, Luis Amado, was the senior European at the Accra talks, officials said.

Europe and Africa held their first summit in 2000. The last planned meeting in 2003 was cancelled, also because of Mugabe.

Portugal has said that it wants to invite all leaders, and Mugabe has said he will attend if asked, even though he faces an EU ban on travel to Europe.

Pedro Courela, adviser to Portugal’s Secretary of State for Cooperation Joao Gomes Cravinho, said on Tuesday that invitations would be issued ”in the next few days”.

But the Britain-Zimbabwe dispute has led many observers to express doubt whether the Lisbon summit will go ahead.

Britain Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said neither he nor any senior British minister would be at any summit attended by Mugabe. Britain accuses him of human rights abuses and fixing 2002 elections to stay in power.

Britain has qualified backing from its European partners.

The Netherlands said on Tuesday it opposed the presence of Mugabe at the EU-Africa summit but the Foreign Ministry did not say if it would boycott the event if he was there.

Sweden also opposes inviting Mugabe to the summit but will not boycott the meeting if he attends, Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said on Wednesday.

European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso said this month that the summit should not be derailed by the tensions between London and Harare.

Governments belonging to the Southern African Development Community regional bloc, which includes Zimbabwe, have threatened to boycott the summit if Mugabe is not allowed to attend.

The leaders of Mozambique and Angola added their weight on Wednesday to pressure for Mugabe to be invited.

”We reaffirm our support for the decision taken by the AU, which demands the unconditional participation of all African countries at the Europe-Africa summit, including Zimbabwe,” Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos and Mozambique’s Armando Guebuza said in a statement after talks in Maputo.

Ghana is current president of the African Union and African foreign ministers met in the capital at the weekend to try to hammer out a stance on Zimbabwe and the final summit agenda.

Top EU and African officials have been meeting in Accra since Monday to discuss the various problems surrounding the summit, where EU and African leaders want climate change, migration and China’s growing involvement in Africa to top the agenda.

Mugabe’s relations with the West have plummeted since he embarked on a programme of land reforms, which saw thousands of white-owned farms expropriated by his government. Zimbabwe’s economy is now in deep crisis with rampant inflation, mass unemployment and widespread poverty.

The EU and United States imposed targeted sanctions, including the travel ban on Mugabe and his close associates, after elections in 2002 that he is alleged to have rigged.

Mugabe says he is not at odds with Europe as a whole but merely Britain, which he says has reneged on an agreement to fund the land redistribution. — AFP

 

AFP