Mbeki’s Office Says Talks Will Resume in Zimbabwe
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Talks to resolve a dispute between President Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front and the Movement for Democratic Change will resume, South African President Mbeki’s office said, denying reports he will travel to Zimbabwe.
“The talks continue in various forms, the parties are in regular and constant contact with each other,” Mr. Mbeki’s spokesman, Mukoni Ratshitanga, said by phone from the South African capital, Pretoria, yesterday. “There is no such thing as a deadlock. We are facilitators.”
Mr. Mbeki was mandated by the 14-nation Southern African Development Community to help end the impasse second-round presidential elections in June were boycotted by the MDC because of its complaints about alleged violence against its supporters.
A Zanu-PF negotiator, Patrick Chinamasa, said August 31 negotiations in South Africa had stalled “for now.” A spokesman for the MDC, Nelson Chinamasa, said on the same day that all the party’s negotiating teams were back in Zimbabwe after reaching a deadlock. The Zimbabwean political parties have been in talks since July.
Mr. Ratshitanga denied a report in Johannesburg’s Business Day that Mbeki will travel to Zimbabwe Friday to break the deadlock.
“It’s false,” he said.
