"Formal talks should happen before June"

South Africa is concerned about the political and economic crisis unfolding in neighbouring Zimbabwe and is playing an active role in defusing the situation, a senior foreign affairs official told IRIN. "Among the SADC [South African Development Community] countries, we are the closest neighbour - anything that happens to Zimbabwe affects us," commented Victor Mditshwa, who heads the Zimbabwean desk in the South African department of foreign affairs. Mditshwa said South African President Thabo Mbeki had urged the ruling ZANU-PF party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) to begin formal talks by June, which had been the purpose of Mbeki's visit to Zimbabwe in December last year. "He [Mbeki] told both the parties that the phase of holding talks about talks is now over, and they had to get down to formal talks." He described the South African efforts as "complementary" to last year's SADC initiative, which tasked Mbeki and presidents Bakili Muluzi of Malawi and Festus Mogae of Botswana with tackling the Zimbabwean crisis. Mditshwa maintained that "informal talks" between ZANU-PF and the MDC were ongoing. "Both parties will deny it, because they do not have their constituency's mandate to hold talks. We have told them to do that now," he said. Responding to criticism by the international community of Mbeki's "quiet diplomacy", Mditshwa said: "Diplomacy is always quiet. Our diplomatic efforts did manage to bring the ZANU-PF and the MDC at the same table last year, which was unthinkable just a year ago. There was a round of talks which produced a document, which proposed changes to the Zimbabwean constitution." The talks, led by the Zimbabwean Minister of Justice Patrick Chinamasa, and MDC secretary-general Welshman Ncube, had managed to "produce a very good chemistry between the two - there is not much difference in their thinking. The stalemate, however, came about because the two parties were not able to agree on the timeframe of a transitional arrangement." He said the ZANU-PF insisted on the arrangement coming into effect closer to the 2005 parliamentary elections, while the MDC wanted it a lot sooner. "The international community does not appreciate the dynamics within Zimbabwe, which are also influencing the pace of the talks. The succession issue within the ZANU-PF is still not resolved. The difference in the functioning styles of the MDC president, Morgan Tsvangirai, and Ncube are also impacting on the internal dynamics of the party," he alleged. Mditshwa said a bilateral commission for protecting the investments of South Africans in Zimbabwe, and vice versa, was being processed and would be established in the first quarter of the year.