Canadian envoy meets VP Mnangagwa
OUTGOING Canadian Ambassador Kumar Gupta yesterday bade farewell to Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa at his Munhumutapa Offices after serving for two years as Ottawa’s chief diplomat in Zimbabwe.
Speaking to journalists after meeting VP Mnangagwa, Ambassador Gupta said Harare and Ottawa should explore ways of working together in various fields.
“I cannot get into the details of the meeting but it was a departure meeting. What I can say is that we should find ways of working together closely on the developmental side, commercial and social sides,” he said.
“There were no specific deals that we discussed but we should identify opportunities that we can work with our partners here.”
Canada is one of the Western countries that have imposed illegal sanctions on Zimbabwe.
Although Zimbabwe has been making frantic efforts to engage the West, Canada included, little headway has been made.
Canada and other countries such as the United States, Australia and New Zealand also imposed illegal sanctions on Zimbabwe after Britain internationalised its bilateral tiff with Zimbabwe on land redistribution.
President Mugabe had on several occasions, including at the United Nations condemned the heinous sanctions and called on the West to lift them unconditionally.
In his 2015 UN General Assembly in New York, President Mugabe said: “Because Zimbabwe has thus been preoccupied with the empowerment of its people economically, she has become a victim of the evil machinations of Western countries, who continually apply unilateral and illegal sanctions as a foreign policy tool to achieve short-term political objectives, particularly regime change.”
The President argued that the illegal sanctions violated the fundamental principles of the United Nations Charter.
The decade long embargo is already losing steam after Zimbabwe embarked on a Look East policy, which is already yielding positive fruits.
Zimbabwe signed several economic deals with China which are changing the country’s economic landscape.