By KUNA,
London : Military intervention in Zimbabwe could be necessary to stop violence sliding into “genocide”, a prominent British politician warned Tuesday.
Paddy Ashdown said the world could not stand by and watch mass slaughter on the scale of Rwanda in the mid-1990s.
The former European Union (EU) High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina told The Times newspaper “The situation in Zimbabwe could deteriorate to a point where genocide could be a possible outcome, something that looks like (another) Rwanda”.
In that event an armed response would have to be considered, with Britain playing a “delicate role” due to its colonial history, he added.
Lord Ashdown, who was also a former Liberal Democrat party leader here, raised the prospect of military action as international outrage grew over Robert Mugabe’s “stolen” presidential election.
Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was forced to seek refuge in the Dutch Embassy in Harare Monday, after pulling out of the electoral run-off amid vicious attacks on his supporters.
The move sparked a call from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown for the international community to refuse to recognize the result, despite Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party, insisting it would push ahead with the poll this Friday.
In a House of Commons statement, the Prime Minister said Britain would now be pressing for fresh sanctions against Mugabe’s inner circle, including travel bans and the freezing of financial assets held abroad.
“The regime has made it impossible to hold free and fair elections in Zimbabwe.
State-sponsored terror and intimidation has put the opposition in an untenable position”, Brown said.
“The international community must send a powerful and united message that we will not recognize the fraudulent election-rigging and the violence and intimidation of a criminal and discredited cabal”, he added.
United Nations (UN) Secretary General Ban Ki-moon added his voice to those demanding a postponement, branding violence and intimidation by government forces “against the spirit of democracy”.
He said the world had witnessed “fear, hostility and blatant attacks” against Zimbabwe’s people.
“Conditions do not exist for free and fair elections right now in Zimbabwe. There has been too much violence, too much intimidation”, he added.
Meanwhile, former South African president Nelson Mandela arrived in London Monday, amid growing pressure for his successor Thabo Mbeki to intervene in the crisis, observers said.
Mandela, who is here for celebrations of his 90th birthday, is expected to meet Brown in London later, officials said.
More than 60 supporters of Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) were arrested at its Harare headquarters Monday.
The party insisted those detained were women and children who had fled political violence, but Zimbabwean police told local reporters they had only moved 39 people from the building for “hygiene reasons”.
The MDC won the parliamentary vote last March, and is widely believed to have won the first round of the presidential contest outright.
However, official results claimed Tsvangirai led but failed to gain enough votes to avoid a run-off.
A “campaign of violence” by President Mugabe has made it “impossible for a free and fair election to take place” this Friday, a unanimously approved statement from the UN Security Council said.
The 15-nation council also said it “condemns the campaign of violence against the political opposition ahead of the second round of presidential elections”, resulting in the killing of scores of opposition activists and other Zimbabwean people.
Lord Ashdown later said he did not expect the situation to deteriorate to the point where military intervention was needed, insisting diplomatic efforts were “not without hope of success”.
However, the key was an end to the “thunderous” silence of South African President Thabo Mbeki, he told BBC domestic radio.
“I think the UN Security Council resolution and the UN Secretary General’s statement yesterday is likely to be influential and have an effect”, he said.
“Secondly, the key person in this is Thabo Mbeki and so far his silence has been thunderous”.
“If it were the case that in addition to all the other African friends who have so far supported Mugabe, Mbeki, who is under pressure to do this anyway from within South Africa, were to come out in a very strong statement I think that would have an effect. So there is a diplomatic game to play through here and I think it’s not without hope of success”, he added.
The popularity of former Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic increased during the NATO bombing of Belgrade, Lord Ashdown pointed out.
“What removed Milosevic was not the NATO bombing; it was the people, in an election, which finally won through against all Milosevic’s shenanigans”.
“It was in the end world opinion, and the Serb people in an election, that removed Milosevic, not the military intervention”, Lord Ashdown concluded.