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Nigerian Foreign Minister Sule Lamido flew to Zimbabwe on Tuesday to deliver a message to President Robert Mugabe
from his counterpart, Olusegun Obasanjo, a Nigerian Embassy official in Abidjan told IRIN.
He said he did know the contents of the message. "But," he added, "I don't doubt our role in the Zimbabwe-Britain issue." He said that President Obasanjo recently facilitated a meeting between Mugabe and British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook at the European Union-Africa summit in Cairo.
Relations between the two countries have been clouded by the occupation by landless blacks of plantations owned by Zimbabwean whites of mainly British origin.
AFP quoted Obsanjo's spokesman Doyin Okupe as saying that the Nigerian leader "would be prepared and willing" to mediate the lands seizure row if "called upon", but said that that had not yet happened.
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions