EU Deals Brown a Body Blow 


The Herald (Harare)


NEWS
24 October 2007 
Posted to the web 24 October 2007 

By Sydney Kawadza
Harare 

THE European Union has dealt British Prime Minister Gordon Brown a body blow after its parliamentarians invited President Mugabe to attend the EU-Africa Summit set for Lisbon, Portugal, in December. 

EU parliamentarians and their Pan African Parliament counterparts jointly announced the invitation in South Africa last Friday. 

     
Head of the EU parliamentary delegation Mr Michael Gahler and PAP chairperson of the Ad Hoc Committee on Relations with the European Parliament Mr Marwick Khumalo announced at a joint Press conference that they had discussed, and resolved that Cde Mugabe should attend the summit to give his side of the story and discuss challenges confronting Zimbabwe with other leaders. 

The announcement by the EU and PAP MPs came barely 24 hours after Mr Brown -- still smarting after Africa and other EU states refused to endorse his anti-Mugabe stance -- clambered from his high horse, saying he would not oppose President Mugabe's attendance. 

Mr Brown -- who held informal talks with South African President Thabo Mbeki ahead of the rugby World Cup final in France on Saturday -- reportedly assured Mr Mbeki that he was not trying to stop anyone from attending the summit. 

The EU and PAP parliamentarians will hold a pre-summit meeting a day before the official opening of the EU-Africa Summit as they hope to influence deliberations by the heads of state and government. 

The announcement by Mr Gahler, first vice president of the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly, is significant given that he hit the headlines for the wrong reasons in June this year after conspiring with the German embassy in Harare to deny visas to the Zimbabwean delegation to the 13th Session of the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Forum in Wiesbaden, Germany. 

The delegation was supposed to present a draft resolution condemning EU sanctions on Zimbabwe for consideration in Wiesbaden. 

PAP has also, on numerous occasions, tried to sponsor anti-Zimbabwe resolutions in its meetings. 

Mr Brown has cut a lone figure as most EU member-states, the AU, Sadc, Comesa and other regional groupings have refused to endorse his campaign to have President Mugabe excluded from the summit. 

He has, however, found sympathisers in the Nordic countries that have not echoed his boycott threats. 

EU president and summit host Portugal has said it respects Africa's position that President Mugabe should attend the summit and said Britain's stance on Zimbabwe was against European interests. 

Portuguese Foreign Minister Mr Luis Amado said no country "can be pushed aside from dialogue and from the development of long-term strategic relations between the EU and the continent". 

European Commission chief Mr Jose Manuel Barroso concurred, saying the summit should not be derailed by the standoff between Britain and Zimbabwe. 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said all African leaders, including President Mugabe, should attend the summit. 

The last EU-Africa Summit was held in Cairo, Egypt, in December 2003, and there has been no other summit for the past four years as Africa refused to give in to British demands to hold a summit excluding Zimbabwe. 

Africa has maintained that the summit should involve leaders from the continent and invitations should not be selective. 

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