UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he would hold talks on Zimbabwe with a number of African leaders on the sidelines of a UN summit in Ghana starting yesterday.
Ban said he and the leaders at the talks in Accra would discuss “how to get developments there back to normal,” the BBC reported yesterday.
His remarks came shortly after his predecessor, Kofi Annan, called on African leaders to do more to address the crisis in Zimbabwe where three weeks after polls were held, the results of the presidential elections are still unknown.
PHOTO: AFP
Some votes are currently being recounted.
Speaking ahead of the five-day UN trade and development summit, starting yesterday, Ban said in addition to Zimbabwe, the problems in Ivory Coast, Darfur and Kenya were also high on the agenda, the reports said.
He said the conference could not have come at a more “crucial time,” with soaring food prices posing a threat to the stability of developing countries.
Annan called on other African nations to get more involved to help resolve the impasse in Zimbabwe and warned that the crisis could have an impact beyond Zimbabwe.
“The question which has been posed is: Where are the Africans? Where are their leaders and the countries in the region, what are they doing?” he said. “It is a rather dangerous situation. It’s a serious crisis with impact beyond Zimbabwe.”
Annan made his comments to reporters in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, where he held talks with Zimbabwean opposition leaders on Friday.
Meanwhile, the ongoing partial vote recount from Zimbabwe’s general elections, which has triggered controversy, could go beyond the three days initially envisaged, the electoral agency said yesterday.
“Initially we had said it would take three days to complete the exercise but since we had delays we may be going above the three days,” Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) deputy chief elections officer Utoile Silaigwana said.
“It is not a small exercise and we want to ensure that there are no mistakes this time around,” he said.
He said that the recount, which entered its second day yesterday, was going smoothly but was likely to run on following delays at some polling stations on the first day, Saturday.
“Everything is going on well so far. We have had no complaints from either parties,” Silaigwana said.
“We had delays when we started yesterday because in some cases the initial consultations took long but the process eventually started,” he said.
But opposition MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa yesterday alleged “criminality” in the vote-counting, accusing Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s regime of “playing games with the people.”
“We have information that in some cases ballot boxes were not properly sealed. This is just a circus and we are not going to endorse such a flawed and criminal process,” he said.
“The level of criminality has shown that ZEC is just an extension of ZANU-PF,” he said.
Initial poll results gave the MDC control of parliament in the March 29 polls but the recount could end up with Mugabe’s party winning.
There was still no word yesterday on the outcome of a simultaneous presidential ballot although MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai has claimed victory.
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