zimfinalpush
Talks can resolve Zim crisis: Tsvangirai
13 April 2007
13 April 2007
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HARARE - Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has expressed optimism about planned talks between his party and President Robert Mugabe's government to end the crisis in the country.
"This crisis is going to be resolved through negotiations," Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Tsvangirai told a news conference in the capital Harare.
"And Zanu-PF and MDC will sit down and negotiate under the tutelage and under the facilitation of (South African) President (Thabo) Mbeki."
Zimbabwe's political crisis deteriorated even further last month when state security agents assaulted Tsvangirai and scores of supporters and shot dead an opposition activist as they broke up an anti-government rally.
Tsvangirai said of the planned talks: "Things are moving. We want to see how President Mbeki is going to successfully resolve this crisis and we wish him well."
He confirmed receiving a letter from Mbeki on the planned talks but declined to elaborate on the correspondence.
Mbeki was last month tasked by the Southern African Development Community to broker talks between Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-FP) and the MDC.
"If he (Mugabe) is going to defy, let him defy the whole Southern African Development Community, let him defy the whole world and let him defy President Mbeki and it's up to President Mbeki to deal with that situation," said Tsvangirai.
"It's not in our realm."
Tsvangirai deplored the government crackdown on the opposition, which he said had seen the arrest and abduction of at least 600 supporters.
But he vowed his party would press on with a campaign to demand political and constitutional reforms under the banner of a coalition of church and rights groups.
"Despite this violence and assault, our resolve is not shaken and we will pursue vigorously the quest for democratic change in Zimbabwe."
Scores of opposition activists have been detained and allegedly tortured in the last few weeks, most of them after being accused of firebombing stores and police stations.
The MDC has posed the stiffest challenge to Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980.
Sapa-AFP
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