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Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2000 19:09:00 EST
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Subject: [AfricaMatters] Mandela rules out asking Mugabe to step down

November 3, 2000
Mandela rules out asking Mugabe to step down

Johannesburg (Sapa) - Former president Nelson Mandela has ruled out any
possibility that he would ask Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, who faces
mounting domestic opposition, to stand down.

Mandela told the SABC on Thursday that: "I wouldn't dare approach Mugabe and
ask him to consider standing down."

Mandela said that it was not appropriate for a retired president "to approach
the president of another country when you have a president in your own
country who in any case has good relations with President Mugabe".

SABC quoted Mandela as saying that the matter had not been discussed when he
met a few weeks ago with Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, the
head of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

That contradicted a statement on Monday by MDC deputy secretary general Gift
Chimanikire, who told SABC that Tsvangirai had asked Mandela during their
meeting in late September to persuade Mugabe to leave office before his
presidential term ends in 2002.

Chimanikire said that the party approached 82-year-old Mandela because his
stature as "an African statesman" would enable him to mediate with both the
opposition and Mugabe's ruling Zimbabwe African Nation Union-Patriotic Front.

Mandela, an outspoken opponent of African leaders clinging to power, told a
local newspaper in September that he believed the time had come for
Zimbabwe's only post-independence leader to go.

"I would have wished somebody would talk to him to say, 'look, you have been
in office for 20 years, it's time to step down'," he told the Durban-based
Daily News.

Sapa


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