Maravi

(HERALD) West must lift illegal sanctions

West must lift illegal sanctions

TALKS between Zanu-PF and MDC are progressing well in South Africa, with reports indicating that the two sides are closer to agreement. Sadc — which entrusted South African President Thabo Mbeki to mediate between the two sides — is happy with the progress so far. Mr Mbeki updated regional leaders on the talks at their summit in Lusaka, Zambia, last month.

But despite the progress in the talks, the sanctions that the MDC asked its Western backers to slap on Zimbabwe are still having a negative impact on the country.

Is there any justification for the illegal embargo to remain in place while the two parties negotiate? We do not see any justification whatsover.

Economic challenges that this country is going through are largely because of these illegal sanctions, a fact recognised by Sadc and even by some MDC parliamentarians.

In fact, Sadc, at its extraordinary summit in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, which tasked Mr Mbeki to mediate, appealed for "the lifting of all forms of sanctions against Zimbabwe".

Sadc Executive Secretary Dr Tomaz Salomao, who was tasked by the leaders to carry out a study of the economic situation in Zimbabwe, went a step further and came out strongly against the sanctions which he rightly pointed out are the root cause of the economic challenges which the country is going through.

Yet despite all this, MDC faction leader Mr Morgan Tsvangirai last week chose to celebrate the sanctions with his friends in Australia, rather than tell them to lift them in the spirit of the dialogue in South Africa.

We feel the ball should now be in MDC’s court to go back to its Western backers and tell them to remove the sanctions on Zimbabwe.

It is up to both factions of the MDC to convince their American masters to repeal the infamous Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act.

After all, this is a draconian foreign piece of legislation that was drafted by senior MDC members in both fact- ions who sit in our Parliament to this day.

Zanu-PF has laid all its cards on the table and has agreed to some amendments to the Constitution, details of which would be tabled in Parliament next week.

The issue of sanctions should be high on the agenda of the Mbeki-mediated talks, if it wasn’t already.

Anything other than that would mean that both factions of the MDC are negotiating in bad faith.

The whole region has condemned the illegal sanctions and there is, therefore, no reason why they should not be removed.

Labels: MDC, SANCTIONS, THE HERALD, ZANU-PF

posted by MrK @ 4:00 AM