Commonwealth calls upon Mugabe to honour Abuja

Commonwealth ministers on Saturday called on President Robert Mugabe's government to fully implement an agreement to end Zimbabwe's deepening land crisis.

In a communique issued after three days of talks and visits to assess Zimbabwe's adherence to the Abuja agreement - a plan to end violent seizures of white-owned farms - the ministerial team also urged cooperation with farmers and dialogue on other issues confronting the southern African nation.

"It (the ministerial committee) called upon the government of Zimbabwe to speed up, in particular, the delisting of farms which do not meet the set criteria and also implement the entire process in accordance with the laws and the constitution of Zimbabwe," the communique said.

Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon, who was part of the team led by Nigerian Foreign Minister Sule Lamido, said the foreign ministers had managed to come up with a compromise document despite initial disagreements on several issues. "There was a lot of disagreements on a number of facts on the land crisis in Zimbabwe but there is no alternative other than to take this process forward," McKinnon said.

Mugabe's government agreed seven weeks ago in the Nigerian capital to end 20 months of farm invasions by black settlers in return for pledges of financial help from former colonial power Britain for a fair and orderly land reform programme.

On Friday, the Canadian representative to the mission said the ministers thought Mugabe's government had done little to honour commitments made in Abuja. Sanctions by some nations could be a possibility, David Kilgour, Canada's secretary of state for Latin America and Africa, told reporters.

Officials of Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF party who met the ministers on Friday denied accusations by the Commercial Farmer's Union (CFU) and Zimbabwe's opposition that there had been an increase in farm invasions in the past few weeks. Presidential spokesman George Charamba was upbeat about the visit. "We're very happy with the way the talks went," he told IRIN.

The CFU told IRIN on Monday that it was happy there had been recognition and agreement among the visiting Commonwealth ministers of the urgent need to get farmers to plant without interference, to build confidence and to reduce conflict. But Jenni Williams, CFU spokewswoman, told IRIN that disagreement with government remained over post-Abuja land seizures.

"Government said there had been no new occupations since Abuja, they argue that farms taken over since Abuja had already been pegged," she said, refering to the process of designating a farm for occupation. Williams added that the CFU would cooperate with a forthcoming United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) visit set to determine what constitutes the lawful procedure for land acquisition and settlement.