Zimbabwe has warned the UN Security Council that the sanctions it is considering could push the African nation toward civil war.
Zimbabwe’s UN mission also said in a letter provided by the UN on Thursday that the punitive measures proposed by the US and Britain against President Robert Mugabe’s government could turn Zimbabwe into another Somalia, a Horn of Africa nation where warring factions have clashed for the past 17 years.
Those sanctions, the mission said, would lead to the removal of Zimbabwe’s “effective government and, most probably, start a civil war in the country because, in their obsession with ‘regime change,’ Britain and the USA are determined to ignore real, entrenched, fundamental and enduring issues that lie at the heart of Zimbabwe’s internal politics.”
The UN Security Council on Thursday delayed a vote on an arms embargo and financial freeze on Mugabe and top officials in his government as the Harare government and its opposition resumed South African-mediated talks.
But Western powers are still pushing for a vote this week on the UN sanctions. The US and France say they have the nine votes that are required for the 15-nation council to pass the resolution.
South Africa, a council member, has led the opposition to the sanctions, arguing it is not a threat to international peace and security, and therefore not a proper matter for the council to take up. The US, Britain and France say it is.
Russia has threatened to veto it, and China also has opposed sanctions; both have veto power on the council, like the US, Britain and France. But Russia and China also could let the sanctions resolution pass by abstaining from the vote.
Mugabe pushed ahead with the June 27 runoff although the opposition candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, pulled out of the race because of state-sponsored beating and killing of his followers.
Zimbabwe’s UN mission said the nation is “not at war with itself and poses no threat to its neighbors or any other country” and would put the Security Council in the position of becoming “a force multiplier in support of Britain’s colonial crusade against Zimbabwe.”
Mugabe’s government acknowledged through its UN mission “some isolated and localized cases of violence have indeed occurred in Zimbabwe” since the March 29 vote that Tsvangirai won, but not by enough of a margin to avoid the runoff last month.
But the mission’s letter accused Tsvangirai’s opposition party of “premeditation, planning, stage management and exaggeration of this violence, with ever increasing signs of very active British and American encouragement and collusion, as part of a grand strategy aimed at inviting foreign intervention in Zimbabwe.”
ZANU-PF, Zimbabwe’s ruling party, and the opposition were set to hold their second day of talks in South Africa yesterday as the parties lay the ground for substantive negotiations on the country’s crisis.
Nqobizitha Mlilo, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change’s (MDC) chief spokesman in South Africa, said the two sides would continue to discuss conditions needed before fully fledged negotiations can go ahead.
“We are meeting them [the ruling party] face-to-face. We are not afraid of them,” Mlilo said.
The MDC insisted substantive negotiations could only take place following a cessation of all violence, the release of more than 1,500 political prisoners, an expanded mediation team including an African Union permanent envoy and the swearing in of lawmakers as the opposition now controls parliament.
“Those are the issues, that’s the sole agenda. There is no substantive agenda,” Mlilo said.
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