MDC - Morgan Tsvangirai - talks - Thabo Mbeki - Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe power-sharing talks delayed

Tuesday 22 July 2008

Negotiations between President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai on a power-sharing deal have been delayed. The talks were due to begin in South Africa but chief negotiators are yet to leave Harare. C. Dumay reports.

Zimbabwean crisis talks due to start in South Africa struggled to get off the ground on Tuesday as chief negotiators had yet to leave Harare, sources from the opposition and ruling party said.
  
Representatives of the ruling ZANU-PF party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) were meant to begin negotiations towards resolving the country's political crisis after the signing of a historic pact on Monday.
  
As representatives from both parties remained tied up in Zimbabwe, the European Union sought to tighten the screw on veteran President Robert Mugabe's regime by stepping up sanctions on Tuesday.
  
The long-awaited Pretoria talks, given a tight two week timeline, were now expected to begin "in earnest" on Thursday, said Mbeki's spokesman Mukoni Ratshitanga.
  
Zimbabwean government sources said that Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa and Labour Minister Nicholas Goche -- the chief negotiators for the ruling ZANU-PF party -- had been locked in a cabinet meeting all afternoon and were not now expected to fly until Wednesday morning.
  
"Ministers Chinamasa and Goche are still attending the cabinet meeting. We are not sure what time it will finish," one official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
  
"We were initially expecting them to leave in the afternoon but they should now leave tomorrow morning."
  
Meanwhile a source in the larger faction of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said its top negotiators, party chairman Lovemore Moyo and secretary-general Tendai Biti, had also yet to leave.
  
"Chairman Lovemore Moyo is expected to leave tomorrow. He will connect his flight direct from Bulawayo," the source told AFP on condition of anonymity.
  
However a source in the smaller faction of the MDC, which is also taking part in the talks in Pretoria, said its representative had already arrived in South Africa.
  
Both sides agreed in their memorandum of understanding inked in Harare to observe a media blackout during the course of negotiations that are expected to conclude within a fortnight.
  
While commentators have warned significant obstacles remain in the path towards forming "an inclusive government", both Tsvangirai and Mugabe tried on Monday to draw a line under a crisis sparked by disputed elections in March.
  
At a ceremony in Harare overseen by chief mediator and South African President Thabo Mbeki, Mugabe and Tsvangirai shook hands in their first meeting since the opposition leader formed the MDC in 1999 -- albeit with few signs of warmth.
  
Long-standing bitterness between the two hit new heights during the course of the election run-off when Tsvangirai was detained on five separate occasions while campaigning and Biti arrested for treason.
  
The MDC leader subsequently pulled out of the contest after dozens of his party's supporters were killed in attacks that he blamed on pro-Mugabe thugs.
  
Ignoring widespread calls to shelve the ballot, Mugabe went ahead and staged the poll, winning by a predictable landslide.
  
The vote was widely condemned in the West as a sham, with the European Union warning that it would not deal with a government unless headed by Tsvangirai.
  
Despite the Harare agreement, EU foreign ministers still pushed ahead with plans to widen sanctions against Zimbabwe on Tuesday, adding 37 more people to a list of individuals under a visa ban and asset freeze, officials confirmed.
  
The EU's French presidency and an EU official said that four "entities" -- probably major companies -- would also be added to the list of more than 130 individuals under a visa ban and whose assets are frozen.
  
It is the first time that business people and companies in Zimbabwe have been targeted by EU measures.
  
Once seen as a post-colonial success story, the former British colony's economy has been in meltdown since Mugabe began a land reform programme at the turn of the decade and annual inflation now stands at some 2.2 million percent.