Mutambara denies he has signed a deal with Mugabe
Arthur Mutambara has denied allegations that he has signed a deal with Robert Mugabe. He was responding to news reports last night - news based on information derived from insider sources within the Zanu PF party - that he had signed a deal that excluded Morgan Tsvangirai. These comments made by Mutambara today have been extracted from a RadioVOP article here:
“This is a tripartite negotiations framework, you can not get an agreement where two parties agree, all three of them must agree for there to be an agreement. Either the three parties to the negotiations agree - then we have a deal in our country, then we have an agreement in our country, then we have a political settlement to the political impasse in our country. If anyone of the three does not sign up to the agreement, the tripartite negotiations as constituted by SADC would have collapsed.
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“There is no way you can extract a bilateral agreement from this tripartite framework so the negotiations are continuing,” he said.
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“At this stage in the dialogue all the issues are agreed upon between the three parties. We are in agreement on everything except one aspect, just one aspect. On this one aspect Morgan Tsvangirai requested for some time to go and reflect and consult and then come back to the process. I must emphasize that three times in our discussions, Morgan Tsvangirai was agreeable to that aspect. And three times he changed his mind and in the end he said he wanted an opportunity to reflect and consult and then re-engage the process.”
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“In the event that this tripartite negotiating framework does not deliver, then we are back to the drawing table. There is no way you can extract a bilateral agreement from this process. When we are back to the drawing table as a political party we have to go back to our national council, and consult and say here is the result the talks have collapsed what is the way forward, and then people can go do bilateral discussions.
“Alternatively all of us can then sit and watch the tragedy in our country, but however our objective is that this dialogue must not be allowed to crumble. The three political parties must work together and put the nation’s interests ahead of petty party positions, so that the three political parties can achieve a political settlement and allow Zimbabweans to reclaim their lives again”.
He said his party was driven by national interest, as well as the misery and pain that Zimbabweans are going through.
“The people of Zimbabwe demand a solution to their circumstances and as a political party we are trying to play our role in terms of providing leadership in pursuit of that political settelement.”
RadioVOP has another article reporting that seven MPs within the Mutambara aligned formation of the MDC allegedly threatened to leave the formation if their leader signed a deal with Robert Mugabe.
August 20th, 2008 13:45
It seems to me that it was (almost) easier to rid South Africa of apartheid than to rid Zimbabwe of Robert Mugabe. Why is it that the Southern African leaders want to give this know killer of thousands of his own countrymen an easy exit? Is it that they don’t want to set a precedent to ridding a corrupt President from a country by democratic force, because it might just be one of them next time?
The mind boggles at why they give Mugabe the time of day at any leaders conference. All they are doing in the eye’s of the world are tainting themselves with Mugabe’s presence.
Everybody from around the world who live in a democracy will be saying to themselves “you see, these African leaders just can’t cut it when it comes to hard decisions about corrupt African politicians”
It is time for change in Africa and long overdue in Zimbabwe. Act now against this maniac and restor credibility please to Africa.