Wade plans to visit Zimbabwe
2007-10-01 21:09
Dakar - Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade said on Monday that he would travel to Zimbabwe this month to recommend multilateral mediation by African heads of state to try to solve the crisis in the southern African country.
Wade said he wanted to discuss with Zimbabwean President
Robert Mugabe how African leaders, including himself and President Thabo Mbeki, could mediate between Mugabe and his opponents, both domestic and international.
"I'm going to go there in two weeks' time ... to talk with him (Mugabe) to see what Africa can do," the Senegalese president told a news conference in Dakar.
Inflation highest in the world
Wade said the situation in Zimbabwe was deteriorating, with
inflation running at well over 6 000%, the highest in the world, and shortages of basic goods.
Mugabe, 83, who has been in power since independence from
Britain in 1980, rejects accusations that he has abused human
rights and wrecked Zimbabwe's once-prosperous economy.
He accuses Western countries of sabotaging the economy as
punishment for his seizure of white-owned farms to resettle
landless blacks.
Wade, who like Mugabe is in his 80s, complained that there
was no official African Union (AU) position on Zimbabwe and
repeated his view that mediation should not be left to South
Africa's Mbeki alone.
A grouping of southern African nations has mandated Mbeki to
secure a deal on constitutional reform between Mugabe and the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change ahead of March 2008
presidential and parliamentary polls.
Mediation should include Britain
But Wade, who from his small West African country has often
sparred with Mbeki over leadership on African issues, said
Zimbabwe should be dealt with on a wider basis.
"Mbeki is a man of goodwill ... (but) we should tackle the
problem at the level of several heads of state, including Thabo
Mbeki," he said.
Wade said any mediation for Zimbabwe should also bring in
former colonial power Britain, which had been party to a 1979
accord on reforms to end land ownership imbalances between
blacks and whites in former Rhodesia.