Day By Day

Sunday, June 26, 2005

Zimbabwe Update -- Can Diplomacy Accomplish Anything?

Mad Bobby Mugabe’s reign of terror continues in Zimbabwe and all efforts to stem it have failed. Appeals from the West have been ineffective and so have those from the clergy. The opposition has been completely demoralized and is incapable of mounting effective resistance. Economic sanctions are impossible because so much of Zimbabwe’s population is barely surviving as it is. [For a discussion of the scope of the disaster read here.]

The African Union refuses to condemn Mugabe’s actions and South Africa, the only power in the region capable of possibly influencing him, actually supports his policies.

What is to be done?

Well, there's this:

The Scotsman reports:

BRITISH government diplomats have held secret talks in Zimbabwe aimed at persuading Robert Mugabe to hand over power and return his devastated nation to the Commonwealth, it was claimed last night.

Senior sources in London and Zimbabwe told Scotland on Sunday that the dictator's closest allies have been pressing the British government to relax its stance against Mugabe in advance of an attempted breakthrough in the stalemate at the G8 summit in Scotland this week.

And they claimed that Foreign Office diplomats have already travelled to Zimbabwe to begin clandestine negotiations with representatives of the hated dictator's regime, with a view to returning the nation to the Commonwealth, three years after it was suspended.

But the proposed 'peace plan' for Zimbabwe would require Mugabe to resign from the presidency and withdraw from the public eye - although he could retain an over-arching role as the 'Father of the Nation'.

Read it here.

There is a certain urgency to the proposal. Not only are millions of lives imperiled, but Mugabe’s actions are threatening to disrupt international relations at a number of levels. Already there are tensions between Britain, which condemns the brutality of his policies, and South Africa and Tanzania which support him. The controversy could disrupt this fall’s Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, and could derail Tony Blair’s attempts to build support for his African Aid initiative.

At present there is little likelihood that the diplomatic effort will yield satisfactory results. Contacts with the Zimbabwe government so far have proceeded only at low levels and international disunity, even in the face of these horrors, precludes any effective effort. China, which supports Mugabe, will block any UN initiative. The G-8 cannot act. The African Union refuses to take action. And as a result, millions of Africa’s most vulnerable people will suffer.

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