Mugabe: Britain is open for talks with us
ROBERT MUGABE, the Zimbabwean president, declared that Britain is open for dialogue with his regime after a meeting with Sir Nicholas Soames, the Conservative MP, in Harare.
“We can talk to Britain,” the president said. “All along we thought the British did not want dialogue. This latest visit shows they do.”
Sir Nicholas confirmed to The Daily Telegraph that he met Mr Mugabe and said he was left “touched” after an “extraordinary” meeting with the 93-yearold authoritarian ruler. But the meeting was criticised by the Zimbabwean opposition and the Foreign Office said the visit was unofficial.
Christopher Soames, Sir Nicholas’ father, was the last governor of Southern Rhodesia and oversaw Mr Mugabe’s accession to power at the end of white minority rule.
Sir Nicholas, a grandson of Sir Winston Churchill, who spent 45 minutes with the ageing president on Wednesday evening, told The Telegraph: “I was invited by the ambassador [Catriona Laing] to go to Zimbabwe to take part in the Embassy’s commemorations of the First World War and to see Commonwealth war graves.
“It suddenly occurred to me that my darling old dad would never forgive me if I didn’t go and see Mr Mugabe.”
He said while the ambassador helped arrange the meeting, it was not part of the official programme.
“It was an extraordinary meeting,” said Sir Nicholas. “He pulled himself to his feet when I was shown into his office and he told me, ‘you must sit in my chair, that is the chair your father was sitting in when I came to see him the day after the election when he asked me to form a government’.
“I know things haven’t gone absolutely rippingly... but it was a piece of real history. I very much felt the presence of my father in the room.”
Mr Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe since 1980 and has said he plans to stand for another term as president at elections next year, despite his age.
He clashed with Tony Blair’s government over a violent campaign of land seizures against white farmers and is banned from Britain and the European Union for human rights abuses. He is also accused of bringing the economy to the brink of collapse and silencing opposition through violence.
Mr Mugabe yesterday cast the meeting as an endorsement by the British Government and claimed it heralded a thaw in relations.
Speaking to his pro-government media, Mr Mugabe said Sir Nicholas told him that “there are some good people who still are your friends in Britain”. He went on: “We can talk to Britain. All along we thought the British did not want dialogue. This latest visit shows they do and we have always been willing to engage,” he told the
Harare Herald.
Obert Gutu, a spokesman for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, said: “It appears the British are really more concerned about securing their interests in Zimbabwe.”
Sir Nicholas said he was “fully aware of the very, very serious issues” between Britain and Zimbabwe and said he was clear that the visit was personal and non-political.
The meeting was condemned by Labour MP Kate Hoey, chairman of the all party parliamentary group on Zimbabwe. “This meeting will only pander to the vanity of a wily and ruthless dictator,” she said.