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DA: Zim must be on UN agenda
15/04/2008 18:50 - (SA)
Cape Town - Government needs to ensure that Zimbabwe is placed on the United Nations Security Council agenda to regain its credibility, the Democratic Alliance said on Tuesday.
"A failure to do so will in all likelihood be the final nail in the coffin of any remaining aspirations we cherish for a permanent seat on the Security Council," DA spokesperson Tony Leon said.
As the current rotational chair of the Security Council, South Africa had a major role to play in determining the agenda of the council.
Matter of "international peace and security"
"However, inexplicably, it appears that South Africa is opting once again to hide behind the well-worn, and in this case ludicrous, excuse that this issue has no bearing on international peace and security," he said.
This was exactly the same pretext upon which government had blocked UN action on human rights abuses in Belarus, Burma, Sudan and a number of other countries around the world since it assumed a non-permanent seat on the council early last year.
"There can be no question that the Zimbabwe crisis is a matter of international peace and security; if it is left unresolved there is every chance that a violent conflict of the type recently seen in Kenya following the general elections there will erupt.
"This will have very real security and other consequences for all of Zimbabwe's neighbours, including South Africa."
It would seem the Government was no longer content with pretending there was no crisis in Zimbabwe - a view which had now even been contradicted by the ANC.
It was now trying to protect President Robert Mugabe from any form of international sanction or rebuke, Leon said.
US and Britain will raise issue
Western diplomats were reported earlier on Tuesday as having said the United States and Britain would raise the Zimbabwe crisis at a high-level meeting in the council on Wednesday despite South African opposition.
"We intend to highlight our concern for Zimbabwe," Benjamin Chang, a spokesperson for the US mission to the United Nations told AFP. "We will be raising Zimbabwe, among other issues."
The occasion would be a meeting to be hosted by South Africa to discuss ways to boost security co-operation between the UN and the African Union.
Delayed election results will also feature
Chang said the delay in releasing officials results of Zimbabwe's March 29 presidential poll would also be taken up in bilateral meetings during the gathering.
Participants were to include South African President Thabo Mbeki, his counterparts from Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, Somalia and Tanzania as well as Prime Ministers Gordon Brown of Britain and Romano Prodi of Italy.
Another Western diplomat said Brown was also likely to bring up Zimbabwe in his remarks to the council as well as in bilateral meetings with Mbeki and other leaders.
Crisis 'not on the council's agenda
South Africa's UN Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo said last week that the crisis should not be raised during Wednesday's meeting because it was not on the council's agenda and was best handled by Zimbabwe's neighbours in the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
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