We’ll keep talking - Commonwealth chief

Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon said on Wednesday that he wanted to maintain dialogue with Zimbabwe over land reforms and other issues, shying away from discussing any possible sanction, AFP reported.

Asked if the Commonwealth was considering suspending Zimbabwe from its councils, a sanction already imposed on the likes of Pakistan, he said: “Our principle objective has been to engage in a productive way at a senior level with the Zimbabwe government to achieve the kinds of results that people would want to see.” A deal reached in Nigeria earlier this month, he added, had been the beginning of a process that “we would want to see continue”.

However, McKinnon said a planned visit to Zimbabwe next week by the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group, the body’s executive arm, had been postponed because President Robert Mugabe would be out of the country. In Abuja, Britain agreed to fund land reform to correct imbalances in land ownership in its former colony, where the bulk of commercial farmland remains owned by the white minority.

The Zimbabwean government in turn committed itself to implementing its land reform programme in accordance with the constitution.

McKinnon said the commitment by Zimbabwe was “a very powerful statement in terms of being prepared to internationalise the land redistribution issue, for recognition of the rule of law and human rights and freedom of the press”. McKinnon was speaking at the launch of the Commonwealth’s biennial report to heads of government ahead of a summit in Brisbane, Australia, in October, the report said.