Two weeks from hosting the second-ever summit between Europe and Africa, Portugal is scrambling to ensure that Zimbabwe’s contentious presence does not eclipse the chance for a true partnership between the European Union and the world’s poorest continent.
”This is about a summit that has not been held for seven years, a summit on human rights, on climate change, on migration, on problems of the EU and the African Union,” Prime Minister Jose Socrates of Portugal, which currently holds the rotating EU presidency, was quoted as saying on Thursday.
”I would like the summit not to be about one country or one leader,” he said, according to the Portuguese news agency Lusa, referring to Zimbabwe and its controversial leader, Robert Mugabe.
The day before, Portugal’s Foreign Minister, Luis Amado, astonished European diplomats by judging it ”preferable” if Mugabe did not attend, since he might divert participants from essential issues.
Amado had previously fought for Zimbabwe’s presence at the summit.
Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe since its 1980 independence from Britain and is accused by the West of stifling democracy and leading his Southern African nation to economic ruin, has said he means to attend the Lisbon summit, although he faces an EU travel ban.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has vowed that neither he nor any senior Cabinet member will attend if Mugabe turns up.
”In this story, the Portuguese are playing a double game. They want their summit. They’ll have it, but one must wait to see who will come and at what level,” a European diplomat said.
Amado’s remarks have been greeted with irony in some parts of Africa, where Southern African governments in particular have threatened to boycott the summit if Mugabe is barred from attending.
”It is not possible to invite someone and to ask him to leave his arm or finger a home,” Mario Feliz, Africa director at Angola’s Foreign Ministry, was quoted by Lusa as saying, in reference to the AU.
No EU-Africa summit has been held since the first and only one in Cairo seven years ago, as several European countries rejected inviting Mugabe, accused of human rights violations.
Other European capitals have conditioned Mugabe’s attendance at the Lisbon summit to the organising of a debate on Zimbabwe.
But during a visit to Portugal, Senegalese Foreign Minister Cheikh Tidiane Gadio adopted Lisbon’s line of downplaying the Mugabe question.
”We are 52 countries in Africa. Why reduce Africa to Zimbabwe?” asked Gadio, who thanked Portugal for offering an opportunity for Africa and Europe to discuss ”fundamental questions” through the summit. — Sapa-AFP