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HARARE: Nelson Mandela and US President George W.
Bush led mounting world outrage over Zimbabwe, where veteran leader
Robert Mugabe is pressing on with what is seen as a “sham”
presidential run-off vote.
As pressure on the octogenarian
Mugabe ratcheted, Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangi-rai
called for armed peacekeepers to be sent to the country to stop
terror attacks on his supporters.
The world’s favorite elder
statesman Mandela, an African liberation icon like Mugabe, spoke
Wednesday of a “tragic failure of leadership in our neighboring
Zimbabwe” during a celebrity fundraising dinner in London to mark
his 90th birthday.
“We look back at much human
progress, but we sadly note so much failing as well,” Mandela
lamented.
“Friday’s elections, you
know, appear to be a sham,” Bush said, referring to Mugabe’s
insistence to press on with the vote despite Tsvangirai’s
withdrawal due to attacks on his supporters and intimidation.
“You can’t have free
elections if a candidate is not allowed to campaign freely and his
supporters aren’t allowed to campaign without fear of
intimidation,” Bush said.
Meanwhile, Zimbabwe’s neigh-bors
from the 14-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC)
held an emergency summit in Swaziland and urged for the vote to be
postponed.
Tomaz Augusto Salomao, SADC
chief, told reporters after the meeting that “elections under the
current environment undermines the credibility and legitimacy of the
outcome.”
He asked that the country
“consider postponing the vote until a later day.”
Tsvangirai called for
peace-keepers and emerged briefly from the Dutch embassy, where he
has been holed up since Sunday after announcing his ballot
withdrawal, to appeal for fresh regional efforts to resolve the
crisis.
He said a negotiated settlement
provides the best answer, but warned he was open to talks only if
Friday’s run-off election did not go ahead with Mugabe as the sole
candidate.
Reiterating his call for
peace-keepers, Tsvangirai referred to his earlier comments in
Britain’s Guardian newspaper that the UN had to go further than
verbal condemnation of Mugabe and move to “active isolation”
which required “a force to protect the people.”
“I didn’t ask for any
military intervention, but for armed peace-keepers,” he told
reporters.
“The people in the country can
wait no longer.”
Tsvangirai indicated earlier in a
television interview he would leave Zimbabwe if Mugabe claims
victory after Friday’s poll.
Around 200 people claiming to be
victims of political violence in Zimbabwe gathered at the South
African Embassy in Harare on Wednesday night seeking refuge.
A reporter from the Agence
France-Presse saw men, women and children huddled in the open in the
car park of the embassy situated less than a kilometer from
Mugabe’s official residence.
--AFP
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