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Abuja Talks' Success Depends on Britain: Zimbabwean Official
The talks on the Britain-Zimbabwe relations beginning in Abuja, Nigeria on Thursday will be successful if Britain is prepared to free herself from an imperial outlook that has tended to stand between her and the stark reality of her past role in southern Africa, The Herald newspaper reported on Thursday.
Zimbabwean Secretary for Information and Publicity George Charamba was quoted as saying on Wednesday that "success of Abuja will also depend on her readiness or otherwise to emerge from this imaginary European laager by which she has been giving herself a false sense of invincibility."
Speaking on the eve of the Abuja talks aimed at mending relations between Zimbabwe and Britain, which have soured over the land issue, Charamba said that "as long as the United Kingdom accepts that the land issue is the problem and that Britain and Zimbabwe have the mandate and responsibility to resolve it then we will have a new day in Abuja."
Nigeria will chair the talks, which will be attended by foreign ministers from Australia, Canada, Kenya, Jamaica, Nigeria, South Africa, Britain and Zimbabwe.
In London, Reuters reported that Britain played down on the prospects of a breakthrough at the talks but quoted an unnamed senior Foreign Office official as saying the foreign ministers faced a major challenge trying to resolve the issue.
"If you think about where we are, where we've got to and the scale of what needs to be done, you couldn't just do it like that in one meeting," the senior Foreign Office official said.
"We positively support land reform in Zimbabwe but it has to be within the context of the rule of law," he added.
Before his arrival in the Nigerian capital on Wednesday at the head of a high-powered delegation for the first major international conference on the Zimbabwe land issue, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said he was going to Nigeria "with a constructive spirit, but also a realistic one".
Zimbabwe on Wednesday accepted a land offer from white farmers aimed at breaking an impasse over Zimbabwe' land reform program.
In the plan, the white Commercial Farmers Union offered to drop legal challenges to Zimbabwe's land reform program and to help organize financing to resettle black farmers as part of the deal.
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