Mugabe to Boycott SADC Emergency Meeting on Zimbabwe Saturday

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has snubbed a regional extraordinary summit to discuss the country’s political crisis, but will rather dispatch junior ministers to attend the meeting in Zambia, sources said on Friday.
The Zimbabwean delegation would be led by Foreign Affairs Minister, Simbarashe Mumbengegwi and includes Justice Minister, Patrick Chinamasa, and senior government officials.

Speaking before leaving for Lusaka, on Friday, the Foreign Affairs permanent secretary, Joey Bimha, described Saturday’s hastily organised Southern African Development Community (SADC) extraordinary summit as “unnecessary”.

He said by calling for the summit, SADC was putting the cart before the horse as the Zimbabwean elections body was still verifying results of the hotly disputed presidential polls held last month.

SADC chairperson and Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa called the special regional summit as a political crisis developed over the failure by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission to announce results of presidential polls held 13 days ago.

Meanwhile, ZEC announced on Thursday that it had its hands tied and could not release the results until verifying tallies from all constituencies and until an opposition court case is finalized.

The opposition Movement for Democratic Change has taken ZEC to court to force it to announce the results.

The court is expected to rule on the MDC petition on Monday.

Source African Press Agency

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