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US envoy urges Mugabe to step down

The top US envoy to Africa said on Thursday that Zimbabwe’s opposition leader won his nation’s disputed presidential election and longtime Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe should step down.

The opposition has claimed its leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, beat Mugabe outright on March 29. Independent Zimbabwean observers also say Tsvangirai won, though not by enough to avoid a run-off — and Jendayi Frazer, assistant US Secretary of State for African Affairs, cited those figures when she spoke to reporters on Thursday.

Zimbabweans still await the results. The opposition accuses Mugabe of withholding them while he plots how to keep power and orchestrates a campaign of retribution that the opposition says has killed at least 10 of its supporters. The octogenarian Mugabe has led Zimbabwe since independence in 1980.

Frazer was responding to questions about a power-sharing agreement.

“We think in this situation we have a clear victor,” she said.

“Morgan Tsvangirai won, and perhaps outright, at which point you don’t need a government of national unity. You have to accept the result,” she said.

Independent tallies gave Tsvangirai 49.4 percent of votes, a projection that, with a margin of error, means Tsvangirai could have won more than the 50 percent plus one vote needed for outright victory.

Of Mugabe, Frazer said: “He contested for president and he lost ... President Mugabe should respect the will of the people and allow a new president to come in.”

That new president should be Tsvangirai, she said.

She was with the US ambassador to Zimbabwe, James McGhee, who said about 1,000 people have been displaced in the violence and that hospitals are unable to cope with the growing numbers of victims.

McGhee said his embassy had proof that granaries have been burned to intimidate people — an outrage in a country where two-thirds of the people are dependent on international food aid.

Zimbabwean civil rights and civic groups presented a dossier, including pictures of victims with broken limbs and missing teeth, to election observers from the Southern African Development Community, said Fambai Ngirande, spokesman for the National Association of Non-Governmental Organizations. He said one group among the 20 had documented 486 cases of assault and torture, including an opposition supporter stabbed to death.

Zimbabwe’s state-controlled Herald newspaper, a government mouthpiece, on Wednesday floated the idea of a national unity government led by Mugabe to organize new elections.

But Frazer said “any such government would have to be led by Morgan Tsvangirai as the clear winner of the most votes.”

Frazer was to meet Tsvangirai later on Thursday. South African President Thabo Mbeki, who has been mediating the Zimbabwe crisis with a “quiet diplomacy” criticized in many quarters, is out of the country.

The US envoy is scheduled to travel to Angola to meet with Angolan President Eduardo dos Santos, a staunch ally of Mugabe, and to Zambia for talks with Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa. Mwanawasa, considered critical of Mugabe, is current head of the Southern African Development Community of 15 nations, which is thought to have some sway over the intransigent Zimbabwean leader.

Meanwhile, a Chinese ship that sparked international condemnation for attempting to transport weapons to Zimbabwe is being brought back to China, the Chinese government said on Thursday.

“To my knowledge, the Chinese company has decided to bring back the boat,” Jiang Yu (姜瑜), a foreign ministry spokeswoman, told reporters.

“The cargo was not unloaded because the Zimbabwe side failed to receive the goods as scheduled, so the Chinese company made the decision according to this situation,” Jiang said.

The ship, identified as the An Yue Jiang and belonging to COSCO, a state-owned shipping firm, was forced to abandon plans to off-load the arms in the South African port of Durban last week.
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