Hardly any work done as Zimbabwe deadline looms

HARARE, Wednesday

Zimbabwe’s feuding political parties look set to miss a monthend deadline set by the Southern African Development Committee (SADC) to conclude outstanding issues of their power sharing agreement as negotiators are yet to meet.

SADC averted a political meltdown on November 6 when it convinced Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai to end a three week boycott of the unity government.

But the regional body gave the squabbling parties a 30-day deadline to resolve a slate of thorny disputes.

An emergency SADC mini summit in Mozambique to tackle the Zimbabwe crisis gave the parties 15 days to kick start negotiations.

The deadline is fast approaching without any signs of movement signalling the parties’ seriousness to end their disputes, including the arrest and harassment of Mr Tsvangirai’s loyalists.

On Monday, some of the negotiators from President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF and the two Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) factions met the PM, in what officials said was a brief meeting to set the tone for the talks.

Two minutes

The meeting only lasted about two minutes as some of the negotiators were said to be out of the country.

This means that negotiations will not start until Friday, a senior official in Mr Tsvangirai’s office said.

“They will work from Friday right into the weekend to deal with the matters as brought on the table through the SADC troika summit,” said Mr Gorden Moyo, the Minister of State in the PM’s office.

“The principals themselves have met and agreed on a programme.

“On Monday the Prime Minister was then implementing the agreement in as far as their meeting was concerned.”
The main MDC’s chief negotiator and Finance Minister Mr Tendai Biti was however, optimistic the negotiations were on course.

“PM Tsvangirai implored us to start the negotiations but the meeting did not go far because there was no representation from the other party (small MDC faction) whose negotiators are out of the country,” he said.

“We are hoping to start the negotiations as soon as the other negotiators are back and we will work hard to make sure we meet the stipulated time frame.”