By Prensa Latina,
Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt : Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is willing to meet with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, but he rejected any foreign interference, the president’s spokesman, George Charamba, said here on Tuesday.
Charamba told reporters at the 11th African Union Summit, being held in this Egyptian coastal resort, that the Zimbabwean government is willing to find a peaceful solution to the conflict.
He noted that dialogue must be “free of foreign interference” and slammed Great Britain for criticizing President Mugabe and his party, in an attempt to revive the former metropolis’s treatment during the colonial period.
My country is sovereign and independent (since 1980), said Charamba, who declined to say whether Mugabe is willing to share power with Tsvangirai, although he made it clear that the president has to sit at the negotiating table first.
“Kenya is Kenya and Zimbabwe is Zimbabwe,” the spokesman said, ruling out that the same formula implemented in Kenya, which was also hit by postelection violence early this year, has to be implemented in Zimbabwe as well.
He admitted that there were outbreaks of violence promoted by followers of Tsvangirai’s Democratic Change Movement (DCM) and the governing Zimbabwean African National Unity-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF).
In any case, those violent expressions were encouraged by foreign forces interested in destabilizing the Zimbabwean government, added Charamba, who called on Great Britain and the rest of the western world to keep their hands off Zimbabwe.
Charamba criticized the motions of condemnation approved by the UN Security Council and rejected Washington’s announced sanctions, because the heart of the matter is to try to overthrow Mugabe.