Zimbabwe crisis sparks emergency summit

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25361747


Zimbabwe crisis sparks emergency summit
African leaders seek resolution; opposition leader wants U.N. peacekeepers

LOBAMBA, Swaziland - Southern African heads of state gathered Wednesday for an emergency meeting to discuss Zimbabwe's crisis.

The meeting in Swaziland's capital Mbabane was called by the 14-nation regional body, the Southern African Development Community (SADC), as international pressure mounted on President Robert Mugabe to call off Friday's presidential election.

However, South African President Thabo Mbeki did not attend the meeting.

Mbeki was appointed by the bloc to mediate between Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai but has been widely criticized for being ineffective and too soft on Mugabe.

Mbeki's spokesman said the South African leader was not going to the summit because he is not a member of the regional bloc's security committee.

Unprecedented condemnation
Tsvangirai, who has withdrawn from the election, urged the United Nations to isolate Mugabe and called for a peacekeeping force in Zimbabwe.

Mugabe has refused to call off the vote, shrugging off mounting international pressure including Monday's unprecedented U.N. Security Council condemnation of violence. It said a free and fair run-off election on Friday was impossible.

SADC is seen as the only body that can influence events in Zimbabwe. Several of its members have been flooded by millions of refugees fleeing the economic collapse of the once-prosperous country.

Tsvangirai, who has taken refuge in the Dutch embassy in Harare since Sunday, said Zimbabwe would "break" if the world did not come to its aid.

"We ask for the U.N. to go further than its recent resolution, condemning the violence in Zimbabwe, to encompass an active isolation of the dictator Mugabe," he wrote in Britain's Guardian newspaper.

'Military force'

"For this we need a force to protect the people. We do not want armed conflict, but the people of Zimbabwe need the words of indignation from global leaders to be backed by the moral rectitude of military force," said Tsvangirai.
"Such a force would be in the role of peacekeepers, not troublemakers. They would separate the people from their oppressors and cast the protective shield around the democratic process for which Zimbabwe yearns."

Pressure has increased on Mugabe from both inside and outside Africa over Zimbabwe's political and economic crisis, blamed by the West and the opposition on the 84-year-old president, who has held power for 28 years.

The United States urged SADC to declare both the election and Mugabe's government illegitimate.

Friday's vote was meant to be a run-off between Mugabe and Tsvangirai. The opposition leader won a first round in March but did not get the absolute majority needed to avoid a run-off.

Both Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade and the leader of South Africa's ruling African National Congress said Friday's election must be postponed after Tsvangirai's withdrawal.

ANC leader Jacob Zuma, who rivals Mbeki as South Africa's most powerful man, called for urgent intervention by the United Nations and SADC, saying the situation in Zimbabwe was out of control.

British plan to deploy troops?

But the ANC also warned against international intervention following a report in the Times of London that Britain has drawn up contingency plans for deploying troops in Zimbabwe to resolve a humanitarian crisis and to evacuate British nationals and their dependents.

"A lasting solution has to be led by the Zimbabweans and any attempts by outside players to impose regime change will merely deepen the crisis," the ANC said.

It singled out Britain, the colonial power when Zimbabwe was still Rhodesia, saying it had not followed through on pledges to help fund efforts to put more land in the hands of black Zimbabweans. Britain has cited concerns about corruption.

Mugabe remained defiant, telling a rally in western Zimbabwe on Tuesday: "The West can scream all it wants. Elections will go on. Those who want to recognize our legitimacy can do so, those who don't want, should not."
'Frightened of the people'

Campaigning Tuesday, Mugabe kicked a soccer ball before thousands of cheering supporters and declared he would not back down.

Tsvangirai "is frightened of the people," Mugabe told the crowd. "He ran and sought refuge in the Dutch Embassy .... Seeking refuge from what? Nobody wants to harm him."

In pulling out of the race Sunday, Tsvangirai said an onslaught of state-sponsored violence against his Democratic Movement for Change made competing in the runoff impossible.

The party said Tuesday that the chairwoman of one of its provincial branches was the latest victim when she was attacked and seriously injured by Mugabe loyalists in a northern region that has seen some of the worst violence.
The party also said the rural home of its national organizing secretary was attacked Tuesday by Mugabe loyalists in military uniform. The party said the official's 80-year-old father was beaten and two other relatives were shot in the legs.

George Sibotshiwe, a spokesman for Tsvangirai, said the politician had received a tip that soldiers were on the way to his home Sunday, when he announced he was pulling out of the runoff.

Tsvangirai told the Dutch national broadcaster NOS radio Tuesday that the Dutch ambassador had spoken to the Zimbabwean government and received assurances there was no threat. Tsvangirai said he might leave the embassy on Wednesday.

But the U.S. ambassador to Zimbabwe, James McGee, said Tsvangirai should be wary of government assurances and that violence was escalating against the opposition as election day approaches.

"There's really nothing that we can do in the international community to stop these elections," McGee told reporters, adding that the embassy expected Mugabe militants to force voters to go to the polls Friday, and to attack anyone who does not.
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"May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't." -General George S. Patton

Psalm 82-8: Arise, O God, judge the earth, for You inherit all the nations.