AP News, November 29th, 2007
A fellow African leader called Zimbabwe's president a brother, and urged the West to lift sanctions against Robert Mugabe's government.
Visiting Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade became the latest African leader to rally to Mugabe as Zimbabwe's economy crumbles. While Wade, like his counterparts elsewhere on the continent, said he did not condone policies Mugabe's critics inside and outside Zimbabwe blame for the country's economic and political crises, he argued confrontation was not the way out.
"I think that we should now stand for the alleviation of the sanctions put on Zimbabwe and its people," Wade said at a state dinner late Wednesday, characterizing the sanctions as a failed Western response and saying Africans must devise their own solution.
Mugabe has long argued Western sanctions are to blame for his country's problems. But Europe and the United States argue that their "targeted sanctions" — like travel bans on top officials — don't hurt most Zimbabweans, and that loans, aid and investment have dried up not because of sanctions but because of fears about risk — worsened by corruption, mismanagement and threats of property seizures — and concern over Zimbabwe's human rights record.
Wade said lifting sanctions should be raised at an upcoming Europe-African summit.
Zimbabwe threatens to dominate the Dec. 8-9 summit in Lisbon because of a standoff between Mugabe and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who has said he cannot sit in the same meetings with a man accused of ruining his country's economy and democracy. Mugabe — otherwise banned from traveling to Europe — has pledged to attend.
Wade had flown to Zimbabwe's capital in what he called an effort undertaken at his own initiative to mediate between Brown and Mugabe. He said he supported Mugabe's plans to go to Lisbon and hoped to meet with Brown and persuade him to attend as well.
Speaking to reporters in Harare Wednesday, neither Wade nor Mugabe addressed accusations that Mugabe, Zimbabwe's ruler since independence from Britain in 1980, had turned a country that was once a major food exporter into an internationally isolated nation where skyrocketing inflation makes buying bread difficult.
Zimbabwe, once part of the British colony of Rhodesia, was long-governed by a ruling white elite that controlled much of the country's wealth. Critics date the start of Zimbabwe's runaway prices, chronic unemployment and acute shortages to Mugabe's government's decision to strip white Zimbabweans of their farms to give to blacks in 2000. The economic decline has been accompanied by a crackdown on political dissenters, whether white or black.
Portugal, which holds the EU's rotating presidency, wants the Europe-Africa summit to herald a period of closer cooperation between the 27-nation European Union and the 53-member African Union and counter the influence of China which has invested billions of euros (dollars) in developing African countries in recent years.
The summit is also set to address human rights, good governance and global warming.
Portuguese officials say they would prefer Mugabe stay home for fear he would divert attention from key issues. But at the insistence of the AU, Portugal invited all Africa's leaders.
