Meetings with Chissano to begin next week - Dhlakama

The leader of Mozambique’s main opposition RENAMO party, Afonso Dhlakama, announced on Monday that he would begin meetings next week with President Joaquim Chissano in an effort to ease political tensions in the wake of recent violence, LUSA reported. Dhlakama said that FRELIMO, Mozambique’s ruling party since independence in 1975, was ready to “empower” RENAMO governors in the six (of 11) provinces won by RENAMO in general elections a year ago. Speaking at a conference in the Brazilian city of São Paulo, he said he believed in the “sincerity” of the Maputo government’s willingness to engage in dialogue. “Pressure from the people and investors’ flight from the country have made the government want dialogue”, he added. Dhlakama also repeated charges that the December 1999 elections, which handed victory to Chissano and FRELIMO, had been fraudulent and highlighted what he termed a lack of democracy in Mozambique. Recent tensions began on 9 November when more than 40 people died during nationwide opposition demonstrations called to protest against the election result. On 22 November, at least 83 prisoners, most of them RENAMO supporters, were found suffocated to death in a tiny prison cell in the northern town of Montepuez, where some of the worst protest violence had taken place.