South African Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu on Wednesday proposed sending an international peacekeeping force to Zimbabwe in the wake of the unresolved presidential elections.
Tutu told the BBC he favoured ”a mixed force of Africans and others” to protect human rights in the beleaguered African country.
”It is a peacekeeping force,” he said. ”It is not one that is going to be aggressive. It is merely ensuring that human rights are maintained.”
The former archbishop said he supported any deal that would stave off conflict in Zimbabwe, but added that he believed the evidence supported claims by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) that it had unseated President Robert Mugabe.
”Anything that would save the possibilities of bloodshed, of conflict, I am quite willing to support,” he said.
”The people of Zimbabwe have suffered enough, and we don’t … want any more possibilities of bloodshed.”
He continued: ”In a fraught situation such as we have had in Zimbabwe, anything that is helping towards a move, a transition, from the repression to the possibilities of democracy and freedom, oh, for goodness sake, please let us accept that.”
Peter Hain, a former British government minister who was a prominent campaigner against apartheid in South Africa, meanwhile said Britain, Zimbabwe’s former colonial ruler, should not act unilaterally to hasten Mugabe’s departure.
Hain called on the international community to put pressure on the backers of Mugabe’s government, including China.
”What matters is that there is an orderly transition of power and that if Robert Mugabe needs a safe passage then the international community can accommodate that,” Hain told BBC radio.
He called on leaders from Zimbabwe’s Southern African neighbours to ”work together with everybody, from the United Nations to Beijing — which has of course bankrolled Mugabe’s regime — to London to Paris to the European Union and the Commonwealth, everybody should work together to support the restoration of democracy and the verdict of the people”.
Hain added: ”An African solution to this crisis is in the end what is needed.”
State of alert
Meanwhile, Zambia said on Wednesday it had put its security forces along the border with Zimbabwe on alert as the delayed announcement of results from Zimbabwe’s elections rattled nerves internationally.
The state of alert was a precautionary measure in case tensions caused by the four-day long wait for the election results erupted into violence and an influx of refugees into Zambia, Defence Minister George Mpombo said.
”I hope our brothers in Zimbabwe will handle the situation without compromising the security of their country,” he said. ”We pray that the whole issue will be handled peacefully.”
The alert related to the border towns of Chirundu, Livingstone, Siavonga and other southern border areas, Mpombo said.
Livingstone tourist resort is just across the border from the Zimbabwean resort of Victoria Falls.
Security operations would continue as normal for the moment in those areas but would be strengthened if the situation escalated in order to protect Zambians living in border areas, he said.
Four days after Zimbabwe’s elections, in which Mugabe is seeking to extend his 28-year grip on power, no official results from the presidential elections have been released.
Partial results from the concomitant parliamentary vote show the opposition with a slight lead in the House of Assembly vote. — AFP, Sapa-dpa