Tsvangirai to meet unity govt negotiators

The Southern African Development Community (SADC)s special organ on politics and defence more than a week ago directed the Zimbabwean parties to open up negotiations to resolve their power-sharing differences. Tsvangirai’s spokesperson James Maridadi said the Premier’s meeting with negotiators follows a meeting on Friday by the three principal political leaders Mugabe, Tsvangirai and Deputy Premier Arthur Mutambara which lasted for one and half hours.

“The Prime Minister will be inviting all the negotiators early this week to chart the way forward before the principals meet again,” Maridadi said, adding that the principals meeting was frank, fruitful and progressive.

According to the SADC resolutions in Maputo over a week ago, Harare coalition partners are expected to resolve all the outstanding issues from the Global Political Agreement (GPA) within 15 days.

The GPA is the power-sharing agreement that gave birth to Zimbabwes February unity government that analysts say is the most viable way to end the countrys political problems. But the GPA is yet to be implemented in full with both ZANU PF and Tsvangirais MDC-T party blaming each other for stalling on the agreement. The outstanding issues include Mugabes refusal to rescind his unilateral appointment of two of his top allies to head Zimbabwes central bank and the attorney generals office.

Mugabe has also refused to swear in Tsvangirai ally Roy Bennett as deputy agriculture minister while the MDC-T is also unhappy by what it says is selective application of the law to target its activists and officials.

On the other hand Mugabe, who insists that he has met all his obligations under the GPA, accuses the MDC-T of not living up to a promise to lead a campaign for lifting of Western sanctions against the veteran Zimbabwean leader and members of his inner circle. South African President Jacob Zuma, who has taken over from his predecessor Thabo Mbeki as facilitator in the Zimbabwe dialogue is expected in Harare to try to pressure Mugabe and his coalition partners to quicken implementation of the GPA.

Professor Welshman Ncube, the lead negotiator for the Mutambara-led MDC formation, said at the weekend that the 15-day deadline was a short period to resolve the outstanding issues troubling the unity government.

“We have always said the 15 days deadline was a short period, but what can we do if those are set dates. On Zuma whatever the case is, he is supposed to come to check whether there are positive or negative developments. No dates have been set yet for his coming, but he has to know,” Ncube said. The MDC-T stopped attending Cabinet on October 16 to protest Mugabes refusal to quicken the pace of democratic reforms and to resolve the outstanding issues and only called off the boycott after the SADC organ, also known as the Troika, ordered the Zimbabwean parties to resume dialogue.