SHARM EL-SHEIKH: African leaders on Tuesday called for dialogue between Zimbabwe s political foes and a national unity government following President Robert Mugabe s widely discredited re-election.
A two-day African Union summit agreed to encourage President Robert Mugabe and the Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai to initiate dialogue with a view to promoting peace, stability, in a final resolution.
The summit, held amid mounting Western calls for sanctions, also decided to support the call for the creation of a government of national unity, to support SADC (Southern African Development Community) facilitation .The SADC regional body has already been leading mediation efforts between Mugabe and Tsvangirai.
According to host country Egypt, Mugabe did not object to the resolution.
Mugabe s regime said Wednesday it was ready for talks with all sides in order to resolve Zimbabwe s political crisis. As the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) met to discuss its response to the resolution, the information minister said it was an echo of Mugabe s own call for dialogue.
Speaking to AFP in Harare, Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu said it was a welcome resolution which is an endorsement of President Mugabe s statements and pronouncements. Government is ready for dialogue with whoever, a dialogue for national unity in Zimbabwe, Ndlovu added.
In his inauguration speech on Sunday, Mugabe said it was time for Zimbabweans to bury their political differences and try to work around unity.
Tsvangirai has also spoken of his desire to sit down with Africa s oldest leader and even held out the possibility of the 84-year-old remaining as a ceremonial head of state under a rewritten constitution.
The MDC leader was chairing a meeting of the party s national executive committee on Wednesday to discuss the Sharm El-Sheikh outcome.
Despite the reaction from the Mugabe camp, there is still deep skepticism about the possibilities of any kind of deal between the two men who have been arch rivals for years.
Meanwhile, South African President Thabo Mbeki, the chief mediator between Mugabe s ZANU-PF party and the opposition, warned against trying to impose a solution from the outside after new EU president France said it would only deal with an administration headed by MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
Senegal s President Abdoulaye Wade, speaking to the French radio RFI on Tuesday, said his South African counterpart Thabo Mbeki had proposed in the closed-door talks that Mugabe share power with Tsvangirai.
But Mugabe is not of this state of mind, he said.
He told me this is not possible, that he has his supporters. I reminded him this party [MDC] is a real force and that if a prime minister had to be chosen by his level of representation, it could only be Tsvangirai, he said.
I think Mugabe will reflect over all this. I m not sure he can be persuaded from the first go, said Wade.
In Harare, MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa said his opposition group would also carefully examine the resolution. We need to understand the resolution first, then we will issue a full statement, he told AFP.
According to an AU source who took part in the talks, Nigeria and Senegal both want the unity government to be based on the result of the first round of the presidential [polls] which Tsvangirai won.
Senegalese President Abdulaye Wade spoke for more than an hour, saying the second round was void and that he had tried to convince Robert Mugabe not to go through with the poll, the source said.
Nigeria was also very firm about denouncing the second round and said it did not reflect the will of the Zimbabwean people.
Botswana went further and called for Zimbabwe to be suspended from the AU and the SADC, in a move which a diplomat said was aimed at pressuring Mugabe to accept a power-sharing deal.
Botswana s position is that the outcome of these elections does not confer legitimacy on the government of President Mugabe, Botswana s Vice President Mompati S. Merafhe told the summit.
The AU diplomat said, the feeling of several heads of state is that the sharing should be done with Morgan Tsvangirai as prime minister, but that s not explicitly stated in the resolution.
Mugabe won the runoff that was marred by violence, which prompted Tsvangirai, who won the first round, to withdraw ahead of the vote.
The diplomat explained the final resolution consists of three main points: dialogue between Mugabe s Zanu-PF party and Tsvangirai s MDC, formation of a national unity government, and support for SADC s mediation efforts.
But the text does not specify whether the opposition would be given the role of president or prime minister with executive powers.
Mugabe, 84, attended the summit in Egypt after he was sworn in for a sixth term, having been declared the runoff winner with more than 85 percent of the vote in a one-man race.
The opposition number two, Tendai Biti, said earlier that Mugabe s one-man election killed off any prospect of a negotiated political settlement and denied any talks were taking place.
While the MDC has pursued dialogue in a bid to establish a government of national healing before June 4, the sham election on June 27 totally and completely exterminated any prospect of a negotiated settlement.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon pledged to work to broker a solution, while repeating his view that the election lacked legitimacy.
Washington announced on Monday that it was preparing to submit a draft sanctions resolution to the UN Security Council and urged African leaders to listen to their own election observers.
The vote fell short of the African Union s standards of democratic elections, the AU observers said in a statement issued in Harare on Monday.
The European Union, on the first day of France s rotating presidency, took a tough stance on Mugabe, with French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner telling France 2 public television that Brussels will not accept a government other than one led by Mr Tsvangirai.
The French presidency, along with the [European] Commission, is clear: the government is illegitimate if it isn t led by opposition leader Mr Tsvangirai, Kouchner stated.
European governments are also looking at a raft of sanctions, French foreign ministry spokesman Eric Chevallier said.
The new measures, which come on top of 2007 sanctions, could include slapping visa bans and asset freezes on members of Mugabe s entourage, Chevallier said.
However, African Union Commission President Jean Ping called Tuesday on the international community from interfering too much in the Zimbabwe crisis.
It should be left to Africans to solve the problem without too much interference … A little confidence should be put in us, in Africans, he said after AU leaders adopted their resolution. -AFP
