(HERALD) Brown standing on shaky ground
Brown standing on shaky groundBRITISH Prime Minister Gordon Brown is running scared of a possible confrontation with President Mugabe at the forthcoming European Union-African Union Summit, slated for Portugal later this year. In order to hide his fear, he has issued a public ultimatum that if President Mugabe attends the summit, he will boycott.
Instead of behaving like a schoolboy who runs away with the ball when he is losing the game, the British Prime Minister should show the world how courageous he is by confronting Zimbabwe face to face on any issues he feels need to be addressed.
On his part, President Mugabe has been open to dialogue and prepared to discuss issues with the British.
As we all know, the guilty are afraid. Mr Brown is standing on shaky ground having refused to honour his country’s colonial obligations to fund land reforms in Zimbabwe.
Instead of facing the prospect of losing the game at the hands of not only a former colony but a little African country, Mr Brown has decided to hightail it. Probably the images of former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s humiliation in South Africa at the hands of President Mugabe haunt Mr Brown.
He need not fear but be bold and be his own man.
Mr Brown has nothing to fear from President Mugabe but has everything to gain by engaging in civilised dialogue that will eventually lead to an agreement over the bilateral dispute between the two countries.
Now that the pretext of using the opposition MDC as a scapegoat is out of the way as both the opposition and ruling Zanu-PF are moving in the same direction, it becomes extremely difficult for the British to justify their continued assault on Zimbabwe.
The British will now have to deal with President Mugabe directly.
The forthcoming summit is the perfect platform to initiate such dialogue and Mr Brown can look for support from his fellow Europeans while President Mugabe will be backed by his fellow Africans.
It is indeed childish, if not silly, for Mr Brown to claim that he will boycott the EU-AU Summit on the basis of Zimbabwe’s attendance when we all know that both leaders will be in New York next week for the UN General Assembly.
Maybe the British will feel comforted enough by big brother America.
The AU has pronounced itself clearly on the summit, with the Foreign Minister of Ghana, the current AU chair, Mr Akwasi Osei Adjei, last week emphasising that all AU member states will be invited to the summit.
Even the summit hosts Portugal, which chairs the rotating EU presidency, has been very clear on who will attend the meeting, saying it has no intention of discriminating against President Mugabe.
One would have thought that since taking over as British Prime Minister, Mr Brown was studying the Zimbabwe situation so as to avoid the same pitfalls that hounded his predecessor’s term of office.
The AU and Sadc have urged London and Harare to find a lasting solution to their bilateral dispute and this certainly cannot be found through boycotts.
Labels: EU, GORDON BROWN, SADC, THE HERALD
posted by MrK @ 4:11 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home