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'Mbeki not a credible mediator'
04/05/2008 21:05 - (SA)
Johannesburg - President Thabo Mbeki can no longer be considered a credible mediator in the Zimbabwe crisis, the Democratic Alliance's parliamentary leader, Sandra Botha, said on Sunday.
When Parliament reconvened on Tuesday, Botha said, she intended moving a motion calling for a debate on the post-election crisis in Zimbabwe, and more specifically, probing Mbeki and the SA government's "distinct lack of action" on the matter.
Botha last month gave a representative of Foreign minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma a letter detailing proposed demands to the Mugabe government to help bring about an end to the post-election violence and political stalemate in Zimbabwe.
If the Zimbabwean government failed to meet these demands, the DA proposed that SA pursue more stringent measures, such as imposing targeted travel and financial sanctions on Zanu-PF's ruling elite, and calling for an international arms embargo on the country.
Despite having received these proposals, government had yet to respond to the crisis in any significant way, Botha said.
"To add insult to injury, we now know from reports in the media that President Mbeki not only endorsed the effort by Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF to procure a massive cache of arms and ammunition from China, but that Mbeki instructed the Ministry of Defence and the National Conventional Arms Control Committee to allow the arms transfer to continue unhindered."
This morally bankrupt move would have contributed to the violent suppression of the Zimbabwean people by the military and the police there.
This was "further evidence that President Mbeki can no longer be considered a credible mediator in the Zimbabwe crisis".
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