Full-scale talks aimed at resolving Zimbabwe’s months-long political crisis are now expected to begin in South Africa today, a report in state media said yesterday.
Zimbabwean Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa, chief negotiator for President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party, told the Herald it had been agreed with the opposition to begin the talks only when all the delegates were in place.
“All parties to the dialogue agreed that talks should begin on Thursday,” he told the daily.
The talks had initially been due to begin on Tuesday but Chinamasa said that all the delegates should now arrive in South Africa by the end of yesterday and would then “travel to the venue for the talks, wherever that would be.”
Chinamasa and ZANU-PF’s other senior negotiator Nicholas Goche stayed in Harare on Tuesday to attend a Cabinet meeting while opposition officials also delayed their travel plans.
A source in the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said its top negotiator Tendai Biti had flown out of Harare yesterday but it was not known whether the party’s Bulawayo-based chairman Lovemore Moyo had left.
Mugabe, main MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara, head of a breakaway opposition faction, penned a memorandum of understanding on Monday to pave the way for talks.
“This is just the first step on a journey whose duration and success is dependent on the sincerity and good faith of all parties involved,” Tsvangirai said in a statement Tuesday.
Although the venue of the talks has been kept under wraps, the negotiations are expected to take place in Pretoria. The rivals have set themselves a tight two-week timeline to wrap up the talks aimed at agreeing on the line-up of a new government.
Mugabe was re-elected in a one-man run-off last month after Tsvangirai pulled out, citing a campaign of intimidation and violence against his supporters that had killed dozens and injured thousands. The vote was widely condemned in the West as a sham, with the EU warning that it would not deal with a government unless headed by Tsvangirai.
EU foreign ministers agreed in Brussels to strengthen sanctions against Mugabe as a means of pressuring him to agree to share power with the opposition — a sign the West plans to keep the pressure on Mugabe.
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said Monday’s face-to-face meeting between Mugabe and Tsvangirai — their first in 10 years — was only “a first step,” and that EU nations were expecting more proof that Mugabe was willing to sign up to a transitional government with the opposition.
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