Diplomats at UN push for accord on Zimbabwe
UNITED NATIONS - Top diplomats at a special UN Security Council session on Africa pressed Zimbabwe's president yesterday to solve the country's election crisis, with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown charging that "no one" thinks President Robert Mugabe has won.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged Mugabe to release the final results of the March 29 election that may topple the 84-year-old ruler, warning that the situation could seriously deteriorate in Zimbabwe. He offered the United Nations' help to resolve the impasse, including assisting in a second round of "fair and transparent" elections if needed.
Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai claims victory, based on results posted outside of polling places on election day. He has accused Mugabe of using the delay to try to rig the results.
"No one thinks, having seen the results of polling stations, that President Mugabe has won this election," Brown told fellow leaders and officials from the Security Council and African Union nations gathered for the session on African peace and security. "A stolen election would not be a democratic election at all."
The meeting, chaired by President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, which holds the Security Council presidency for April, focused on how the Security Council could help the African Union solve regional conflicts. But the session was riven by subtle conflicts itself: Mbeki, an influential ally of Mugabe, said last week after a visit to Zimbabwe that "there is no crisis" and warned other countries not to meddle.
South Africa has blocked the Security Council from addressing the issue. Mbeki canceled a morning meeting with Brown due to "schedule conflicts," which British officials sought to assure reporters was not a snub. Before the morning council session, a small plane chartered by advocacy group Avaaz.org towed a banner above the UN headquarters declaring "Mbeki: Time to Act - Democracy for Zimbabwe."
The meeting aimed to smooth cooperation between the Security Council and the African Union. The UN and the AU would like the regional group to assume greater responsibility in dealing with local conflicts, which occupy much of the Security Council's agenda.
The secretary general yesterday called for creating an African standby force to be supported by an international trust fund and mediation team. The United States, which pays 23 percent of the budget for all peacekeeping operations, and Sudan urged the Security Council to focus on preventing conflict to reduce the need for costly peacekeeping intervention.
The African Union's effort to stabilize the conflict in Sudan's Darfur region has become a symbol of the unfulfilled potential of regional groups to mediate conflicts. Poorly equipped and underfunded AU troops seeking to bring peace to the war-torn region were absorbed into a joint AU-UN force in January in hopes of better protecting civilians.
The joint force aims to deploy 26,000 troops by the end of the year, but so far, only 9,000 are on the ground.
The deployment has been delayed in part by Sudan's insistence that all the forces must be composed of African soldiers.
