Mugabe ready to face peers over Zimbabwe crisis
HARARE (AFP) — Zimbabwe's government said Thursday that Robert Mugabe was ready to face his fellow heads of state over the country's post-election crisis as the wait for results stretched into a 12th day.
The heads of state that make up the 14-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) have all been invited to attend a summit in the Zambian capital Lusaka on Saturday in a bid to break the impasse between Mugabe's ruling party and the opposition amid growing tensions between both sides.
A source in Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa's office told AFP on Thursday that invitations had been issued and Mugabe was fully expected to attend.
Zimbabwe's deputy information minister stopped short of confirming Mugabe would attend but said he was more than happy to brief his peers on the situation in the former British colony.
"If there is a SADC meeting confirmed by Zambia, President Mugabe will definitely be there," the deputy minister Bright Matonga told AFP.
"There is nothing unusual about his attendance. SADC has obviously come under a lot of international pressure over the Zimbabwe elections and needs to be briefed about what is happening here."
Southern Africa has been heavily criticised over its traditional reluctance to criticise Mugabe who has presided over his country's economic demise during his 28-year rule which began with independence in April 1980.
Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was furious when a team of SADC observers gave the March 29 a clean bill of health before the results had been announced but the party is now hoping Saturday's summit will be an opportunity for the region's leaders to call time on Mugabe's tenure.
"We hope that President Mugabe will be asked to stand down" at Saturday's summit, the party's secretary-general Tendai Biti told reporters on Wednesday.
While the results of a simultaneous parliamentary election were announced more than a week ago, the Zimbabwe electoral commission has given no word on the outcome of the presidential vote in which MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai took on his 84-year-old rival Mugabe.
Tsvangirai has already claimed to have won enough votes to avoid a second round run-off against Mugabe. The president's party however says a run-off will take place with Mugabe again as its candidate.
The electoral commission says it needs more time to collate and verify the votes, even though the body has already begun dismantling its operations centre in the capital Harare.
The South African government acknowledged on Thursday that the continued vacuum was straining tensions and urged the electoral commission (ZEC) to break its lengthy silence.
"The ZEC should explain the delay in the announcement of the results. This will calm the situation and ease the tension," deputy foreign minister Aziz Pahad told a press briefing.
Pahad also refused to confirm South African President Thabo Mbeki's attendance in Lusaka on Saturday, but said that he would go "if his programme allows."
While Mugabe has lain low, Tsvangirai has launched a diplomatic drive in recent days, visiting neighbours and pleading for help in forcing the result.
In an interview on Wednesday the opposition leader accused Mugabe of a "de facto military coup," saying he was deploying troops around the country to try to intimidate people ahead of a possible run-off election.
Opposition hopes that the country's high court would order the electoral commission to announce the results before the summit were dashed when a judge said he would only decide whether to issue such a ruling on Monday.
But Mugabe's ZANU-PF party has already called for a total recount of the presidential vote and is contesting enough seats to overturn its loss of a parliamentary majority.
Tsvangirai, 56, was expected to travel on to Zambia and Mozambique after holding talks Wednesday with new Botswana President Ian Khama.
Mugabe has often bridled at any kind of outside intervention, blaming the country's economic woes on a limited package of Western sanctions imposed after he allegedly rigged his 2002 re-election.
The former British colony now has a six-figure inflation rate and unemployment is beyond 80 percent while average life expectancy stands at 37 years.
