LEADERS of the top industrialised nations are expected to ratchet up pressure on Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe — and President Thabo Mbeki, mediator in that country’s protracted political crisis — at a three-day Group of Eight (G-8) meeting starting in Japan today.
Mbeki left for the Japanese resort village of Toyako yesterday after another failed mediation initiative in Zimbabwe. He is among the leaders of several developing countries attending the G-8 summit.
Mbeki flew hurriedly to Harare on Saturday for a face-to-face meeting between Mugabe and Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai, widely considered to be the rightful winner of recent presidential elections.
But Tsvangirai did not arrive, citing the non-neutral venue and continued failure to recognise him as winner of the disputed March 29 presidential poll.
Western governments refuse to recognise Mugabe as head of state. The European Union has said Tsvangirai must lead any national unity administration.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the G-8 leaders would discuss how to toughen sanctions on Zimbabwe, an idea opposed by SA in the United Nations Security Council.
“I hope that we will also get support from our African colleagues here,” Merkel said, in a sign of the pressure likely to be put on Mbeki.
Dennis Wilder, senior director for Asian affairs at the US National Security Council, told reporters on Air Force One on the way to Japan that the G-8 would “strongly condemn what Mugabe has done” and “strongly question the legitimacy of his government”.
The African Union (AU) called for a power-sharing agreement in Zimbabwe after a summit in Egypt last week. Tsvangirai rejected the proposal, saying it would not help end violence or recognise the MDC’s March 29 victory.
Pressure on SA continued to mount at home yesterday, too, with visiting British Foreign Secretary David Miliband saying it was “imperative” to find a solution to the worsening crisis in Zimbabwe.
After meeting about 2000 refugees at a centre in Johannesburg, Miliband said Britain would redouble its efforts to ensure that Mugabe’s regime was not seen as “a legitimate representation of the will of the people of Zimbabwe”.
Miliband called for the international community to back US-proposed sanctions on Zimbabwe, to be tabled in coming days at the security council.
The British minister arrived in SA yesterday for talks with Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma under the auspices of the SA-UK Bilateral Forum.
Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad on Friday rejected the draft security council resolution calling for mandatory sanctions to be applied to Mugabe and the senior leadership of Zanu (PF).
Despite reports of continuing violence against MDC supporters, Pahad insisted that the recent AU summit came to that conclusion based on a concrete understanding of the realities on the ground.
“Any other interventions that go against the gist of what the AU summit resolution presents, I believe, will not be of assistance.
“As the AU summit resolution says, we call on all other organisations and the international community to not do anything that will jeopardise what the Southern African Development Community (SADC) facilitation, on behalf of the African continent, is trying to achieve,” Pahad said.
Mbeki is the SADC’s facilitator.
“We therefore hope that those who have proposed this draft will seriously consider what the summit decisions were and allow Africans to solve Africa’s problems,” Pahad said.
The AU resolution, while expressing grave concern , stopped short of refusing to recognise the results of Mugabe’s June 27 one-candidate runoff election, but did not endorse Mugabe maintaining the status quo. Business Day SA