Maravi

(STICKY) (NEWZIMBABWE) Clinton shadow on SADC summit

Clinton shadow on SADC summit
by Staff Reporter
09/06/2011 00:00:00

UNITED States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton flies into Zambia Friday for talks with President Rupiah Banda on the eve of a key SADC summit on Zimbabwe opening in South Africa.

Banda is the current chair of the SADC troika organ on politics and security, and Clinton’s arrival in the region will be seen as a US attempt to lean on regional leaders to take a tough line on President Robert Mugabe.

United States officials said Clinton would be attending a forum on the African Growth and Opportunity Act which was passed to improve trade with Africa. Representatives of 37 countries are expected to attend.

She is due to meet with President Banda hours before he flies to South Africa where SADC leaders will come under intense pressure from NGO networks and Mugabe’s rivals to apply brakes on his plan to call elections later this year, or early next year.

Jonathan Moyo, a senior member of Mugabe’s Zanu PF party who is already in South Africa, said Clinton’s visit to the region on the eve of the SADC summit had one specific reason.

“She wants to peep into Zimbabwe, she thinks there is a North African window,” Moyo said in reference to the US-backed Libyan and Egyptian anti-government uprisings.

“She hopes the ghost of Livingstone will help her, but she will discover that she is in southern Africa and not North Africa. Everything around her will remind her that Zimbabwe will never be a colony again.”

Mugabe’s supporters are increasingly confident that SADC leaders will pull back from endorsing a report tabled by the region’s point man on Zimbabwe, South African President Jacob Zuma, at the troika summit held in Livingstone in April which Mugabe said was based on inaccuracies.

Labels: HILLARY CLINTON, RUPIAH BANDA, SADC

posted by MrK @ 8:54 PM