Zimbabwe has warned the UN Security Council that the sanctions it is considering could push the African nation toward civil war.
Zimbabwe’s UN mission also said in a letter provided by the UN on Thursday that the punitive measures proposed by the US and Britain against President Robert Mugabe’s government could turn Zimbabwe into another Somalia, a Horn of Africa nation where warring factions have clashed for the past 17 years.
Those sanctions, the mission said, would lead to the removal of Zimbabwe’s “effective government and, most probably, start a civil war in the country because, in their obsession with ‘regime change,’ Britain and the USA are determined to ignore real, entrenched, fundamental and enduring issues that lie at the heart of Zimbabwe’s internal politics.”
The UN Security Council on Thursday delayed a vote on an arms embargo and financial freeze on Mugabe and top officials in his government as the Harare government and its opposition resumed South African-mediated talks.
But Western powers are still pushing for a vote this week on the UN sanctions. The US and France say they have the nine votes that are required for the 15-nation council to pass the resolution.
South Africa, a council member, has led the opposition to the sanctions, arguing it is not a threat to international peace and security, and therefore not a proper matter for the council to take up. The US, Britain and France say it is.
Russia has threatened to veto it, and China also has opposed sanctions; both have veto power on the council, like the US, Britain and France. But Russia and China also could let the sanctions resolution pass by abstaining from the vote.
Mugabe pushed ahead with the June 27 runoff although the opposition candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, pulled out of the race because of state-sponsored beating and killing of his followers.
Zimbabwe’s UN mission said the nation is “not at war with itself and poses no threat to its neighbors or any other country” and would put the Security Council in the position of becoming “a force multiplier in support of Britain’s colonial crusade against Zimbabwe.”
Mugabe’s government acknowledged through its UN mission “some isolated and localized cases of violence have indeed occurred in Zimbabwe” since the March 29 vote that Tsvangirai won, but not by enough of a margin to avoid the runoff last month.
But the mission’s letter accused Tsvangirai’s opposition party of “premeditation, planning, stage management and exaggeration of this violence, with ever increasing signs of very active British and American encouragement and collusion, as part of a grand strategy aimed at inviting foreign intervention in Zimbabwe.”
ZANU-PF, Zimbabwe’s ruling party, and the opposition were set to hold their second day of talks in South Africa yesterday as the parties lay the ground for substantive negotiations on the country’s crisis.
Nqobizitha Mlilo, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change’s (MDC) chief spokesman in South Africa, said the two sides would continue to discuss conditions needed before fully fledged negotiations can go ahead.
“We are meeting them [the ruling party] face-to-face. We are not afraid of them,” Mlilo said.
The MDC insisted substantive negotiations could only take place following a cessation of all violence, the release of more than 1,500 political prisoners, an expanded mediation team including an African Union permanent envoy and the swearing in of lawmakers as the opposition now controls parliament.
“Those are the issues, that’s the sole agenda. There is no substantive agenda,” Mlilo said.
‘THEY KILLED HOPE’: Four presidential candidates were killed in the 1980s and 1990s, and Miguel Uribe’s mother died during a police raid to free her from Pablo Escobar Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe has died two months after being shot at a campaign rally, his family said on Monday, as the attack rekindled fears of a return to the nation’s violent past. The 39-year-old conservative senator, a grandson of former Colombian president Julio Cesar Turbay (1978-1982), was shot in the head and leg on June 7 at a rally in the capital, Bogota, by a suspected 15-year-old hitman. Despite signs of progress in the past few weeks, his doctors on Saturday announced he had a new brain hemorrhage. “To break up a family is the most horrific act of violence that
HISTORIC: After the arrest of Kim Keon-hee on financial and political funding charges, the country has for the first time a former president and former first lady behind bars South Korean prosecutors yesterday raided the headquarters of the former party of jailed former South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol to gather evidence in an election meddling case against his wife, a day after she was arrested on corruption and other charges. Former first lady Kim Keon-hee was arrested late on Tuesday on a range of charges including stock manipulation and corruption, prosecutors said. Her arrest came hours after the Seoul Central District Court reviewed prosecutors’ request for an arrest warrant against the 52-year-old. The court granted the warrant, citing the risk of tampering with evidence, after prosecutors submitted an 848-page opinion laying out
STAGNATION: Once a bastion of leftist politics, the Aymara stronghold of El Alto is showing signs of shifting right ahead of the presidential election A giant cruise ship dominates the skyline in the city of El Alto in landlocked Bolivia, a symbol of the transformation of an indigenous bastion keenly fought over in tomorrow’s presidential election. The “Titanic,” as the tallest building in the city is known, serves as the latest in a collection of uber-flamboyant neo-Andean “cholets” — a mix of chalet and “chola” or Indigenous woman — built by Bolivia’s Aymara bourgeoisie over the past two decades. Victor Choque Flores, a self-made 46-year-old businessman, forked out millions of US dollars for his “ship in a sea of bricks,” as he calls his futuristic 12-story
FORUM: The Solomon Islands’ move to bar Taiwan, the US and others from the Pacific Islands Forum has sparked criticism that Beijing’s influence was behind the decision Tuvaluan Prime Minister Feletei Teo said his country might pull out of the region’s top political meeting next month, after host nation Solomon Islands moved to block all external partners — including China, the US and Taiwan — from attending. The Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) leaders’ meeting is to be held in Honiara in September. On Thursday last week, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele told parliament that no dialogue partners would be invited to the annual gathering. Countries outside the Pacific, known as “dialogue partners,” have attended the forum since 1989, to work with Pacific leaders and contribute to discussions around
RSS