Commonwealth group begins meeting without Mugabe

Leaders of a three-member Commonwealth committee on Zimbabwe meeting in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, on Monday failed to agree on fresh action against President Robert Mugabe. Australia's John Howard, South Africa's Thabo Mbeki and Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo were expected to review sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe in March following controversial elections – hotly disputed by the opposition and condemned by foreign observers – which returned Mugabe to power. "There was a difference of opinion," Howard said at a press conference held jointly with Obasanjo and Mbeki after the meeting. "We've agreed that it's necessary to continue to try to engage with President Mugabe in the interests of all the people of Zimbabwe," Mbeki was quoted as saying. Mugabe had declined an invitation by the Australian prime minister to attend the Abuja meeting as "offensive", and an indication he would be facing a "court-martial" at the talks. The Commonwealth, which unites Britain and 53 of its former colonies, set up the committee at the last summit of the group in Australia early this year. Zimbabwe is facing its worst political and economic crisis since independence in 1980, with Mugabe's policy of seizing white-owned farms under his land resettlement programme coinciding with a severe drought affecting most of southern Africa. "The meeting is going ahead without Mugabe and will generally stick to the previous agenda of reviewing the sanctions imposed by the Commonwealth against the current situation in Zimbabwe," a senior aide to Obasanjo told IRIN. A meeting in Abuja late last year brokered by Obasanjo, in which Britain and Zimbabwe were represented, had agreed a deal whereby Harare would suspend the land seizures. The British government, as the former colonial power, was in turn expected to honour its obligations to fund the land reform process as agreed under the terms of the country's independence. But critics of Mugabe accuse him of continuing land seizures and forceful eviction of white farmers contrary to the agreement, and cracking down on the opposition. Current symbolic sanctions against Zimbabwe by the Commonwealth, which essentially forbids diplomatic contacts with Harare, are due to come to an end in March 2003. Diplomatic sources in Abuja said they had expected the current meeting, in the absence of Mugabe, to prepare grounds for tougher action that could have included outright expulsion by next year.