Former Eritrean ambassador,Senior United Nations Official Meets Zimbabwe Leader

BBC NEWS

23/O6/08

United Nations officials say U.N. Special Envoy Haile Menkerios has held talks with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe amid international concern over widespread violence and intimidation of opposition supporters ahead of next’s week runoff presidential election. Delia Robertson reports from our southern Africa bureau in Johannesburg.

Halie Menkerios, right, UN Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs greets Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe in Harare, 17 June 2008

The visit by United Nations Special Envoy Haile Menkerios comes amidst a rapidly deteriorating economic, social and political crisis in Zimbabwe including widespread violence in which some 60 opposition leaders have been killed, and dozens arrested.

Independent humanitarian organizations also report that hundreds of opposition supporters have been severely wounded and that punitive attacks perpetrated by ruling party youth and security forces have left some 25,000 people displaced.

Opposition Movement for Democratic Change Secretary General Tendai Biti is currently in jail with the police saying he will be charged with treason. Party leader Morgan Tsvangirai has been arrested and released without charge five times.

Humanitarian workers say that there have been very few cases of retaliatory violence on the part of opposition supporters. But Mr. Mugabe says he holds the opposition responsible for the deteriorating situation and that he intends to make them pay.

“We are going to accuse the [MDC] party and the party leadership of being vicariously liable and responsible for those crimes of violence, because there is now a pattern visible across the country and that has to stop,” he said.

Morgan Tsvangirai gets off his campaign bus in Harare, 11 Jun 2008

There has been increasingly defiant rhetoric from Mr. Mugabe and his supporters, including his wife Grace Mugabe, that even if opposition leader Tsvangirai wins the runoff, they will never allow him to take power.

Speaking at an election rally this weekend, Mr. Mugabe threatened to go to war to prevent such an eventuality, and made it clear he intends to thwart the democratic process. He told supporters that he had no intention of giving up power for what he called a “mere X” on a ballot – and asked how a ballpoint pen could fight a gun.

U.N. representative Menkerios will remain in Zimbabwe until the end of the week.

Oil price up despite Saudi pledge

BBC NEWS

23/06/08

Oil prices have risen after emergency talks among the world’s top oil powers and leading consuming nations over the weekend ended with no real resolution.

US sweet, light crude for August delivery increased by $2.52 to $137.92 a barrel while London Brent crude was $2.17 up at $136.91.

The rises came despite Saudi Arabia’s promise to increase daily output by an extra 200,000 barrels a day from July.

Record oil prices have pushed up fuel prices, hitting living costs worldwide.

“The oil summit really has not done much to temper oil pricing,” said Victor Shum, an energy analyst with Purvin & Gertz.

No commitment

Fishermen, truck drivers and consumers across Europe and Asia have been protesting against the increase in petrol and diesel costs as oil prices have jumped by about 40% since the beginning of the year.

The oil price has risen more than five-fold since 2000.

Oil price movements since 2000

I think where the market may be a little more comforted is more clarity and scope on Opec capacity Mark Pervan, analyst, ANZ Bank See how the global oil industry breaks down in figures

This prompted Saudi Arabia, the world’s top exporter, to hold a summit over the weekend to discuss the situation with top energy policy makers.

Before the meeting, Saudi Arabia had pledged to lift daily quotas to 9.7 million barrels by the end of July, an increase of about 500,000 barrels since May.

But without specific commitment from other members of the producers’ cartel Opec to lift production following the meeting, the market considered that Saudi Arabia’s move would not be enough to meet soaring demand, especially from fast-growing emerging economies such as China and India.

“I think where the market may be a little more comforted, which could see prices drift lower in the medium term, is more clarity and scope on Opec capacity,” said Mark Pervan, an analyst at Australia’s ANZ Bank.

Geopolitical worries

Prices were also kept high by news that Nigerian oil fields operated by Chevron and Royal Dutch Shell remained shut after they were attacked last week.

The attack on Shell’s installation at Bonga, 120km (75 miles) out to sea, was the first time militants had struck at an offshore oil site, and the move cut a 10th of Nigerian oil production in one go.

High fuel prices have sparked protests in several countries

The militant group the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) has been targeting Nigeria’s oil infrastructure, which supplies crude to the whole of Africa, since 2006, and this has been one factor behind the recent surge in world oil prices.

But in a sudden U-turn, the group called a unilateral ceasefire over the weekend to be effective from midnight on Tuesday until further notice.

Analysts said if it did hold, it may help Nigeria to raise production, which would help to provide some relief to prices. But taking into consideration the scale of past attacks, many analysts remained sceptical.

Oil traders were also eyeing the situation between Israel and Iran following reports that an Israeli military exercise over the eastern Mediterranean was a possible test-run for a strike on Iran.

Tsvangirai seeks embassy refuge

BBC NEWS

23/06/08

Zimbabwe’s opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has taken refuge in the Dutch embassy in the capital, Harare.

A Dutch foreign ministry spokesman said Mr Tsvangirai had spent the night at the embassy as he feared for his safety but had not requested asylum.

On Sunday, he announced he was withdrawing from a presidential election run-off in the face of violence from ruling party militias.

Zimbabwean officials have said the second round will still go ahead.

But Botswana’s Foreign Minister Pando Skelemani said leaders of the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) would have to decide whether Zimbabwe could have a legitimate president in the current political climate.

“If in fact the atmosphere for an election is not free and fair you then can’t have someone having won,” he told the BBC.

“It would be the same as if you had been through the election and they are declared not free and fair, then you are back at square one.”

Ahead of a UN Security Council discussion about Zimbabwe, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said President Robert Mugabe’s regime “cannot be considered legitimate in the absence of a run-off”.

Mr Tsvangirai says pressure from the UN and Sadc could force Mr Mugabe to give up power.

“My assessment is that if there is a collective position by all Sadc leaders, that would be sufficient pressure – that voice is essential,” he told US National Public Radio.

“The conditions of the Security Council on Zimbabwe has one outcome that we will expect… to appoint a mission to investigate the level of abuses that have taken place – rape, torture, murder – and the various human rights abuse that has taken place.”

Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan told the BBC that he believed the elections should be postponed:

“Honestly, given what has happened, I doubt that anyone would accept the results, so they should put off the elections. But I think it is important that we all realise that Zimbabwe needs our help.”

Zimbabwe’s Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa said Mr Tsvangirai’s announcement of his withdrawal was a ruse as he had not sent a formal notice yet.

Arrests

The BBC’s Peter Biles in Johannesburg says Mr Tsvangirai is now considering his next move, but he remains in the Dutch compound.

Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen said that if Mr Tsvangirai was looking for safety at the diplomatic mission, he was welcome.

“We’ve seen the last weeks a new low in the tortured history of Zimbabwe and I think that Mr Mugabe no longer has any moral legitimacy in the eyes of the people of Zimbabwe,” she told the BBC.

Mr Tsvangirai blames supporters of President Mugabe and the ruling Zanu-PF party for the death of 86 of his supporters in the run-up to the second-round, due to be held on Friday.

On Monday, more than 60 supporters of Mr Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party were arrested at its Harare headquarters.

MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa said those arrested were women and children who had fled political violence.

Zimbabwean police told AFP news agency they had only moved 39 people from the building for “hygiene reasons”.

President Mugabe and Zanu-PF blame the opposition for political violence across the country.

The MDC won the parliamentary vote in March, and claims to have won the first round of the presidential contest outright.

In the official results, Mr Tsvangirai led but failed to gain enough votes to avoid a run-off.

Lost opportunities in the Horn of Africa – How conflicts connect and peace agreements unravel

Relief(web)

23/06/08

Executive summary

This report is a study of three peace processes in the Horn of Africa, a region of Africa distinguished by the prevalence and persistence of armed conflict. It deals with the Algiers Agreement of December 2000 between Ethiopia and Eritrea, the Somalia National Peace and Reconciliation Process concluded in October 2004 and the Sudan Comprehensive Peace Agreement of January 2005. It examines in turn the background and historical context of the conflicts that these peace agreements were intended to resolve. It charts the developments since the agreements were signed, seeking to assess how far they have achieved successful outcomes for peace and stability. The results are very mixed.

The Algiers Agreement continues to provide a framework for relations between Ethiopia and Eritrea. But it has not created a permanent settlement between the two sides and now seems unlikely to do so. The two instruments created by Algiers to help Ethiopia and Eritrea reach a permanent peace were the Eritrea–Ethiopia Boundary Commission and the United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE). These both appear to have run their course. The two countries have not returned to war. But their fierce enmity has been played out elsewhere in the region, notably through proxies in Somalia. There is no sign of it ending.

Somalia’sMbgathi peace process produced a Transitional Federal Government (TFG) that was supposed to establish a transitional government and administration based in Mogadishu. The TFG still exists and is recognized as the government of Somalia in the region. But it has proved quite unable to establish its authority inside Somalia. When the Islamic Courts took control of Mogadishu in 2006, Ethiopia decided to install the TFG by force. Since then Mogadishu has been in the grip of a powerful insurgency, part anti-Ethiopian, part Islamist, directed against the TFG and its Ethiopian sponsors. An undersized African Union peacekeeping force is helplessly caught in the middle. Reconciliation efforts pushed by the international community have made little headway. The conflict in South Central Somalia continues to deepen and spread at a terrible human cost, creating conditions that aremuch worse than those that existed before the peace process began.

Sudan’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) has made progress. The South of Sudan has established its own government and the two sides rely heavily on the CPA text to manage their relations. However, some critically important questions remain to be resolved about the territorial definition of the South and the make-up of the Southern population. The results of the recently completed census will be vital. Slippage in the implementation timetable caused a political crisis and near breakdown in late 2007. Anxiety and lack of trust hinder progress; there is much still to do, including elections, before a referendum on independence for the South in 2011. The failure to reach political settlements on key issues of demarcation

and administration in the oil-rich region of Abyei bodes badly. Lack of political will, lack of capacity, lack of trust and the long shadow of conflict in Darfur continue to pose major challenges.

The prevalence of identity politics and processes of state formation and disintegration are identified as common structural features of conflict in the region. The assessments of the peace processes helped to illustrate the ways in which interactions between the states of the region support and sustain the conflicts within them in a systemic way. The interplay of regional and global interests is especially problematic in a region of Africa where the ‘global war on terrorism’ has some resonance.

High levels of security interdependence exist among the countries of the Horn, suggesting that it constitutes a Regional Security Complex. Historical memory plays an important part in how the states and leaderships of the region understand and formulate security threats. It also impedes the prospects for a more stable security order. The regional institution that should take the lead on conflict management, IGAD (the Intergovernmental Authority for Development), is severely hampered by conflict among its member states. In the long term, economic change and growing economic interdependence – an area deserving of further research – seem the most likely drivers of stability.

The study ends with four broad conclusions that have implications for outsiders engaged in conflict analysis or designing conflict resolution interventions:

1 – The need to take account of the long history of amity and enmity in the region as a whole, recognizing that the protagonists of contemporary conflicts experience them as part of a long continuum of warfare. Outsiders have limited influence over conflict dynamics in the region and should set suitably modest goals.

2 – The need to appreciate the problematic nature of the state and its relations with its subjects, especially those on the periphery and in unstable border zones who have long struggled to resist incorporation. This raises some real questions over the applicability of the commonly used weak and fragile state analysis as well as the familiar ‘state-building’ approach to conflict resolution.

3 – The need to see the Horn of Africa as a Regional Security Complex in which the security problems of each country impact on the security of all. The different conflicts interlock with and feed into each other, determining regional foreign policy positions that exacerbate conflict. The regional body, IGAD, is unfortunately too compromised by conflicts among its member states to develop a new framework. Outside actors cannot succeed with a conflict-byconflict approach and need to factor other regional players into their conflict solutions.

4 – Attention must be paid to the influence on the Horn of global agendas. This is a two-way process, with external actors seeking strategic alliances and the regional players courting the attention of the key global players. Conflict has been exacerbated by the insertion of the logic of the globalwar on terrorismin an already complex web of regional conflict. It has polarized parties and reduced the space for mediation. Outsiders interested in mediation need to respond judiciously to the allegations of terrorism levelled against various parties to conflict in the Horn and to seek to develop space for dialogue.

Given the apparent inability of the countries of the Horn to develop a framework for a common regional security order and the limited influence of outsider powers to push successful settlements, the paper recommends a policy approach that:

- Is even-handed in dealing with the states of the region, requiring all of them to conform to the normal conventions of international conduct;

- Prioritizes human security and the need to protect people caught up in conflict;

- Favours local partners, whether states or non-state actors, that protect their people and not those who claim to protect Western interests.

African leaders start talks to resolve Zimbabwe crisis

Times oline

23/06/08

Zimbabwe’s African neighbours have begun consultations on what to do about the violent election crisis that is racking the country.

Jean Ping, the chairman of the African Union Commission, said today that there was grave concern among African nations at events in Zimbabwe, where the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has decided to pull out of the second round of voting blaming the murders, beatings and intimidation of his supporters.

“This development, and the increasing acts of violence in the run-up to the second round of the presidential election, are a matter of grave concern to the Commission of the AU,” said Mr Ping, in a statement. Talks had begun with the continent’s regional leaders about how to resolve the crisis, the statement went on.

Southern African nations appear to agree that the June 27 contest between President Robert Mugabe and Mr Tsvangirai should now be postponed, for more negotiations to take place. Ultimately they favour setting up a Zimbabwean government of national unity.

“There is no need to be ashamed in announcing that the presidential run-off should be called off until further notice,” said President Levy Mwanawasa of Zambia, the chairman of the Southern African Development Community, which has the task of ensuring free and fair elections in Zimbabwe.

“Elections held in such an environment will not only be undemocratic but will also bring embarrassment to the SADC region and the entire continent of Africa.”

Announcing his decision yesterday, Mr Tsvangirai said his Movement for Democratic Change supporters would be risking their lives if they cast votes against President Robert Mugabe. So far an estimated 80 MDC activists or their family members have been killed, more than a thousand tortured and tens of thousands have been displaced from their homes. Tens of thousands more are being forced to take part in “re-education”, singing praise songs about Mr Mugabe and being threatened and cajoled to vote for him.

The MDC blames the violence on the Zimbabwean security forces and mobs loyal to Mr Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party. Mr Mugabe, 84, who has been in power since independence from Britain in 1980, and has vowed never to hand over to the opposition whom he brands puppets of the West, says that it is the MDC which is committing violence.

President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, the SADC negotiator for Zimbabwe, has called for Mr Mugabe and Mr Tsvangirai to negotiate. “I would hope that that leadership would still be open to a process which would result in them coming to some agreement about what happens to their country,” Mbeki was quoted by the SAPA news agency as saying.

Mr Ping has begun consultations with Mr Mbeki, with the SADC and with President Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania, the AU chairman.

“The chairperson of the Commission stresses the need for all Zimbabwean stakeholders to exercise restraint and reiterates his call for an immediate end to all acts of violence,” said Mr Ping’s statement.

“He calls on Zimbabwean parties to work together to overcome the challenges facing their country in this critical phase in its history.”

There has been a international chorus of disapproval and concern from outside Africa. Britain and America intend to raise the issue at a meeting of the United Nations security council later today, and may push for stricter sanctions to be imposed on Zimbabwe.

Lord Malloch-Brown, the Foreign Office minister, said action could be taken through a range of international bodies, including the United Nations Security Council, the African Union and the European Union.

“I believe there is a whole range of things that can be done which can bring this regime to heel in the sense of requiring it to bend to the will of the international community and allow political change,” said Lord Malloch-Brown told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.