Africa and EU split over Zimbabwe
Saturday, November 9, 2002 Posted: 11:48 AM EST (1648 GMT)
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MAPUTO, Mozambique -- A summit of European Union and Southern African Development Community leaders scheduled for 2003 is in doubt because of issues involving Zimbabwe.
At the end of a ministerial meeting in Mozambique on Saturday, Denmark's European Affairs Minister Bertel Haarder, who led the EU delegation, said he had "absolutely no comment" on whether the summit, in Portugal, would go ahead in April as planned.
The EU-SADC ministerial conference had been switched to Mozambique's capital Maputo from Copenhagen after Denmark said it would not allow a delegation from Zimbabwe to attend.
The EU imposed a travel ban on Harare's leaders after President Robert Mugabe's re-election in a March.
The move was made after EU observers called the polling fraudulent, but Mugabe said voting was free and fair and accused Zimbabwe's former colonial ruler Britain of promoting an EU vendetta against him.
In a separate move, the Commonwealth suspended Zimbabwe from its meetings for 12 months in March but stopped short of full suspension.
A diplomat in Maputo told Reuters: "It is unlikely the Lisbon summit will take place.
"SADC will refuse to attend if one of their members is banished, and the EU will not let Zimbabwean leaders in."
Ana Dias Lourenco, Angola's planning minister and current head of SADC's committee of ministers, said the SADC negotiated as a bloc and not as individual countries.
"We would go as SADC, all our 14 members," she said.
Several SADC ministers also questioned the need for such future big meetings with the EU, arguing they achieved little.
An unnamed delegate from Swaziland told Reuters that "little progress" had been made in the Maputo talks.
Closed-door meetings were dominated by the political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe, and how Mugabe's government is handling international food relief aid.
Ministers also discussed how to combat poverty, reviewed the crippling hunger crisis faced by many African countries and talked about fighting AIDS, which is they see as the region's biggest development challenge.
The SADC and the EU did agree food aid should not be used as a political weapon.
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