Mugabe ready to talk to Brown
28/11/2007 22:08  - (SA)  

EU-Africa summit 'not about Zim' Britain-Zim row 'needs to end' Brown snubs summit over Zim Mugabe: I will attend summit UK: Mbeki making Zim progress 'I hope Mugabe doesn't go'

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Harare - Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, caught in a standoff with Britain which has cast a shadow over an EU-Africa summit, said on Wednesday he had no objection to dialogue between the two countries.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said he will boycott the Lisbon summit in December because Mugabe, who has clashed with Britain and other Western governments over charges of rights abuses and controversial policies, will attend.

"We have never ever objected to any dialogue with the British, because if we don't talk, how do they want us to resolve this situation if there is no dialogue? Of course we will talk," Mugabe told reporters after meeting Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade.

'Propose creating a committee'

Wade, critical of South Africa's efforts to end the political crisis in Zimbabwe, said earlier he wanted to create a group of African leaders to resolve the impasse between Harare and its former colonial ruler.

"I am going to propose the creation of a committee of five heads of state, which will include (South African leader) Thabo Mbeki of course, to try to resolve relations between England and Zimbabwe," said Wade, whose visit to Harare follows one by Mbeki last week.

"I am a facilitator ... nobody has sent me here. It is a personal initiative. I know that Thabo Mbeki has done a lot, but the situation has not been resolved so far, said Wade, who has sparred with Mbeki for leadership on continental issues.

In Dakar, the Senegal-based Pan-African Human Rights Group criticised Wade for flying off to Zimbabwe while so many social and economic problems are unresolved in his own country.

'No-one better placed than Mbeki'

"Wade has absolutely no business involving himself in this mediation. He's going to make a fool of himself. Because no one is better placed than Mbeki and he hasn't been able to manage it," the group's secretary general, Alioune Tine, told a news conference in the Senegalese capital.

Southern African states have mandated Mbeki to secure a deal on constitutional reform between Mugabe and Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections due in March.

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