By Xinhua,
Luxembourg : The European Union (EU) on Tuesday urged Zimbabwe to immediately release the March 29 presidential election results as the delay had raised “serious concerns about the credibility” of the electoral process.
“The EU considers unacceptable and unjustifiable that four weeks after the people of Zimbabwe exercised their fundamental democratic right, no results of the Presidential elections have yet been published,” said a statement issued at the meeting of EU foreign ministers.
The ministers expressed their deep concern over the delay in announcing the results as well as over acts of violence, it said. “The EU condemns the post-election violence and intimidation against Zimbabweans and calls for its immediate end.”
The ministers reiterated the EU’s full support for the efforts by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union (AU) to resolve the electoral crisis in Zimbabwe.
The statement said they also commended the recent SADC extraordinary summit in Lusaka and agreed that the SADC has “a crucial role and a responsibility” to continue its engagement to resolve the crisis and commended.
The EU ministers welcomed the AU commitment to continue to work with all the parties concerned in Zimbabwe, SADC, and the international community to ensure the successfully completion of the Zimbabwean electoral process, said the statement.
It said the EU will continue to closely monitor the situation in Zimbabwe, and reiterated its willingness to continue to make use of any opportunity provided to engage in the dialogue with “a democratically elected government of Zimbabwe and, as soon as conditions allow, to begin working toward the resumption of full cooperation.”
In a related development, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission announced Monday that it has finished recounting votes in all the 23 disputed constituencies and results were now being transmitted to the chief elections officer for collation with the initial records.