Zimbabwe’s Opposition, Ruling Parties Begin Talks
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.

HARARE — Negotiators from President Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change met in South Africa yesterday for their first talks since Zimbabwe’s one-candidate presidential “election” last month.
The meeting, a continuation of the process mediated by the South African president, Thabo Mbeki, came despite the MDC repeatedly insisting that the doors to talks had been closed by the vote, which Mr. Mugabe claims gave him a mandate.
It came before a U.N. Security Council meeting last night which could decide on proposed sanctions against Zanu-PF members, described by Prime Minister Brown as a “criminal cabal.”
Despite the talks, the gulf between Zanu-PF and the MDC is apparent in the fact that dozens of MDC members of parliament fear they are still targets for Mugabe thugs.
The Zimbabwean parliament, in which the MDC won a small majority in March, is due to assemble next week but a spokesman for the MDC said that was impossible in the current climate of fear.
“Most of our MPs are in hiding,” he said. “Several are in detention or in hospital recovering from wounds, and a number fled into exile, so until that situation is normal, how can we proceed? That is what these talks will be about.”
The party’s information director, Luke Tamborinyika, who has regularly been arrested, could not say how many MPs were missing.
“We think three are in prison and one is in the intensive care unit in a clinic in Harare, but there may be more. We don’t know how many are hiding out in Botswana or South Africa,” he said.
The MDC’s chief negotiator, Tendai Biti, was expected to press for the mediation team to be extended to include the African Union chairman, Jean Ping.
Other names bandied by the MDC include the former U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan, who would not be acceptable to Mr. Mugabe, and the former trade union leader Cyril Ramaphosa, the key player in negotiations which led to democratic elections in 1994.
[In related news, President Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia said sanctions against Zimbabwe’s government were appropriate and would send a “strong message” that the world condemns the use of violence to remain in power, Bloomberg News reported yesterday.
Conditions before the June 27 presidential runoff election in Zimbabwe weren’t conducive to a free and fair poll, which made Liberia “question the legitimacy of the Zimbabwe government,” Mr. Johnson-Sirleaf told reporters in Johannesburg.
Mr. Robert Mugabe, 84, has faced international condemnation after he extended his 28-year rule in a runoff vote that Mr. Bush called a “sham.” Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew from the election, citing a campaign of state-sponsored violence against his supporters.]