HARARE (AFP) — A stalled power-sharing agreement in Zimbabwe came under fresh strain on Monday after Western powers said it would be unacceptable if Robert Mugabe were to remain president.
Although the opposition Movement for Democratic Change remains committed to a deal which would allow Mugabe to stay on as president while its leader Morgan Tsvangirai would become prime minister, both the United States and former colonial power Britain said that the 84-year-old had to leave office.
"Power-sharing isn't dead but Mugabe has become an absolute impossible obstacle to achieving it," said Britain's Africa minister Mark Malloch Brown.
"He's so distrusted by all sides that I think the Americans are absolutely right, he's going to have to step aside," he told the BBC on Monday.
"Either his people around him or political allies or people he's in contact with in neighbouring countries really have to go to him in one of those famous political delegations and say 'you've got to go'."
Malloch-Brown's comments came a day after the top US diplomat for Africa, Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer, said Washington would not restore aid to the cholera-wracked country unless Mugabe stood down.
"We were prepared to use the American influence to negotiate with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to clear the 1.2 billion dollars' Zimbabwe debt, but now we are no longer prepared to do that," Frazer told reporters on a visit to neighbouring South Africa.
"We have lost confidence in a legitimate power-sharing being viable with Mugabe as president," Frazer added. "He has lost touch with reality."
Mugabe and Tsvangirai signed the power-sharing agreement in September but it has never been implemented due to fierce disagreements over who should control key institutions, such as the interior ministry and the central bank.
In a weekend interview with AFP, Tsvangirai said the MDC would suspend all contact with Mugabe's ZANU-PF party if the abductions of his supporters were not stopped and if those detained were not released or charged by January 1.
MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa declined to endorse the demands by the Western powers for Mugabe to stand aside, saying: "It is their own view and we will not be drawn into commenting on it."
There was no immediate comment from the government, with Monday a public holiday in Zimbabwe.
Mugabe, who has ruled the southern African nation ever since independence in 1980, has made clear that he has no intention of standing down.
In a defiant speech to ZANU-PF's annual conference on Friday, he said that he would "never, never surrender" and that "Zimbabwe is mine."
He has frequently portrayed Tsvangirai as a stooge of Western powers bent on bringing about regime change.
Once seen as a post-colonial role model, Zimbabwe now has the world's highest rate of inflation and has been in political limbo since elections in March when ZANU-PF lost control of parliament for the first time.
Mugabe was also pushed into second place by Tsvangirai in a simultaneous presidential poll but the MDC leader pulled out of a run-off after scores of his supporters were killed.
The power-sharing agreement brokered by former South African president Thabo Mbeki was initially seen as an opportunity for the country to turn a corner.
But since then, the situation has worsened, with the country hit by a deadly cholera outbreak which has now claimed more than 1,120 lives, according to the United Nations.
African countries have largely rejected the calls for the resignation of Mugabe, still seen as a hero by many on the continent for his leading role in the war for independence.
Mugabe, the oldest leader on the continent, has taunted his peers for lacking the bravery to topple him.
Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
