Inter-party talks postponed again

Inter-party talks between ZANU-PF and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) to ease political tensions are not yet dead but have been "adjourned", a senior ruling party official told IRIN on Tuesday.

"It's just an adjournment, a few concerns have to be addressed," said Emmerson Mnangagwa, ZANU-PF's secretary for administration after the ruling party failed to send a team to re-new dialogue on Monday.

Mnangagwa said the party's concerns revolved around the MDC's legal petition for the nullification of the March presidential election and its refusal to recognise the legitimacy of President Robert Mugabe. He did not say when the negotiations would re-start.

The talks are aimed at establishing a platform for dialogue between the two parties and a code of conduct in the wake of the bitter fallout over the controversial election. They are being facilitated by Kgalema Motlanthe, secretary-general of South Africa's ruling African National Congress, and Nigerian diplomat Adebayo Adededji.

The talks were originally scheduled for early April, but after the facilitators had arrived in Harare, they were postponed to 13 May.

The official Herald newspaper reported on Tuesday that ZANU-PF last week wrote to the co-facilitators asking for an adjournment pending the outcome of the MDC's court application. The ruling party also said the MDC's allegedly "inflammatory" newspaper advertisements about the talks ruled out dialogue.

The independent Daily News reported on Tuesday that "strenuous" efforts by the two facilitators to bring ZANU-PF back to the table failed.

In a statement on Monday, MDC secretary-general Welshman Ncube said: "The inter-party talks between MDC and ZANU-PF, which were being held at the behest of Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Thabo Mbeki, did not resume as scheduled today. As far as the MDC is concerned, ZANU-PF has pulled out of the talks and has repudiated its promise to Presidents Mbeki and Obasanjo by closing all doors for a negotiated solution to the political crisis of legitimacy facing Zimbabwe."

The MDC "remains firmly of the conviction that the present de facto government of Robert Mugabe is illegitimate and that there is only one way to restore legitimacy, namely a re-run of the presidential election", the statement said.