Pressure Builds on Mugabe Despite African Union’s Move
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UNITED NATIONS — An American-led drive to involve the U.N. Security Council in the crisis in Zimbabwe and impose sanctions on the regime of President Mugabe is moving forward, despite an African Union resolution that would allow the dictator to remain in power but recommend that he share it with opposition leaders.
Western diplomats here, who are calling Mr. Mugabe a “fake president,” are vowing to pressure the regime, though countries that oppose outside intervention in the crisis are citing the resolution, passed yesterday at the A.U. summit in Egypt, as a reason to keep the Security Council uninvolved. The council showdown, officials said, ensures that any council involvement in Zimbabwe’s disputed presidential election would fail to impress the country’s aging strongman.
“The African continent has the responsibility to find a solution to the problem,” China’s special representative for Africa, Liu Guijin, told U.N. reporters yesterday.
But other diplomats here described the A.U. resolution as “weak,” and Mr. Mugabe’s aides immediately dismissed its call for power sharing. The nonbinding recommendation is based on the agreement, brokered by a former U.N. secretary-general, Kofi Annan, that ended Kenya’s recent postelection crisis.
“Kenya is Kenya. Zimbabwe is Zimbabwe,” a spokesman for Mr. Mugabe, George Charamba, told reporters yesterday at the A.U. summit in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik. “We have our own history of evolving dialogue and resolving political impasses the Zimbabwean way.”
Mr. Mugabe won a runoff election last week after the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change, dropped out. Mr. Tsvangirai, who had won the first round of voting, said he took his name off the ballot because security forces controlled by Mr. Mugabe had harassed, beaten, and killed members of his party.
“What happened is a joke. Mugabe is a fake president and we will not accept it,” the French ambassador to the United Nations, Jean-Maurice Ripert, said yesterday.
“We are not ready to accept something like Burma,” he said, referring to the Security Council’s failure to intervene in the aftermath of the cyclone that struck Burma in May. After the ruling junta there went ahead with a sham referendum on a new constitution despite the natural disaster, the issue fizzled and eventually disappeared from the council’s agenda.
The power-sharing solution, which under a best-case scenario would allow members of Mr. Tsvangirai’s MDC party to be represented symbolically in the Zimbabwe government, was pushed by South Africa’s President Mbeki, who has emerged as Mr. Mugabe’s strongest ally in the continent.
The Pretoria government, which for decades has symbolized hope in Africa, “has stood by the worst regimes around the world,” an African diplomat who spoke on the condition of anonymity said yesterday.
Now in its second year on the Security Council, South Africa has often led the fight there against outside intervention in countries whose governments are accused of abusing their citizens, though decades ago South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress, benefited from council resolutions that sparked worldwide intervention in the fight against apartheid.
After President Bush called for sanctions against Zimbabwe last week, American officials circulated ideas for a Security Council resolution that would include an embargo on arms sold to the Mugabe regime. While American diplomats said yesterday that they have not yet settled on a final text for a sanctions resolution, they vowed to press on.
“We are going to move forward here,” a spokesman for the American U.N. mission, Benjamin Chang, said.
“The text is too over the top,” the South African ambassador to the United Nations, Dumisani Kumalo, told Bloomberg News, referring to an early draft of the American proposal. “I don’t think this is the kind of pressure that will work.”
Libya, the Arab member of the council, is also expected to demand that any resolution on Zimbabwe be watered down significantly. So is Vietnam, which serves as the council’s rotating president for the month of July.
Permanent members China and Russia have long opposed council intervention in what they consider to be internal affairs. China’s Mr. Liu declined to say yesterday whether his country would veto a resolution imposing sanctions on Zimbabwe.