UN’s Ki-Moon told Mugabe to be serious about sharing power in Secret Meeting
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon held secret talks with President Robert Mugabe and, asked him to b serious about meaningfully sharing power with the MDC it has since emerged.
The two men met “one-to-one” for 30 minutes today on the sidelines of a UN development meeting in Doha, Qatar.
“I met with him about the deteriorating humanitarian situation and we discussed power sharing,” Ban said in an interview. “I agreed with him not to talk publicly about what was said. It was one-on-one.”
Ban met Mugabe after consulting Tanzania’s President Jakaya Kikwete, chairman of the African Union, who encouraged the encounter, according to Augustine Mahiga, Tanzania’s ambassador to the UN.
Mahiga said that after the African Union and 15-nation Southern African Development Community failed to persuade Mugabe to agree on a deal with the MDC, Ban’s intervention might be the “last opportunity” for a peaceful settlement.
“He is the only voice that Mugabe hasn’t heard and he has the moral authority of being secretary general,” Mahiga said.
Mugabe told the conference that Zimbabwe “has been and continues to be a victim of unilateral and illegal coercive economic measures aimed at undermining the government through regime change.”
The U.S., which doesn’t consider Mugabe a legitimate head of state, said it was a mistake for the UN to allow him to speak.
“It’s extremely ironic and unacceptable for Mugabe to be going to the UN Conference on Financing Development in Doha while you had the implosion of his economy and the crisis of his population taking place,” Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi E. Frazer said in a statement.
Posted by Wellington Chadehumbe
on December 4, 2008. Filed under Local News.
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