Zimbabwe May Mar Nigeria's AU Leadership
FROM LAOLU AKANDE, NEW YORK
NIGERIA'S role as the new chairman of the African Union may cause it more worries in the international community than the prestige of leadership.
This is predicated on the absence of an outright African condemnation of the perceived human rights situation in Zimbabwe, which is fast becoming the continent's recurring diplomatic nightmare.
Diplomatic sources said at the weekend that Western governments, especially the US and Britain are looking up to Nigeria to ensure that President Robert Mugabe is roundly condemned by his African peers for the political and human rights problems in the Southern African country.
President Olusegun Obasanjo is being counted upon by Western leaders to bring Zimbabwe to account, especially after he had refused to invite Mugabe to the Commonwealth summit in Abuja last year.
But South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki and the immediate past chairman of the AU, Mozambique's President Joachim Chissano are said to be giving more legroom to the embattled Zimbabwean President.
Sources said that Foreign Affairs Minister, Chief Olu Adeniji had presided over a heated meeting of the AU Council of Ministers, which deliberated, among other things, on a scathing report compiled on Zimbabwe by the African Commission for Human and People's Rights.
It was learnt that at the meeting last week in Addis Ababa, the Zimbabwean Foreign Affairs Minister, Comrade Stan Mudenge had fought hard to suppress the report on grounds that the Commission did not make a copy available to him previously and so he could not review and respond. Tunisia was also said to have sided with Zimbabwe.
But sources at the meeting disclosed that it was Nigeria's Adeniji, who while noting Zimbabwe's report, insisted that the AU Ministers consider the report in spite of the country's protest.
The Commission is believed to have sent the report to the Justice Ministry of Zimbabwe, with which it liaised during its mission to the country in 2002 to investigate the human rights situation.
The said report is adjudged critical of the arrests and torture of opposition members, rights lawyers, journalists; and the stifling of the freedom of expression.
But there were conflicting claims in international media reports on the exact action the AU Council of Ministers took after the report was considered.
Western media like Reuters, The Telegraph and Washington Post had reported that the Council of Ministers, which is the AU executive council, had adopted the report, raising expectations that the organisation's Summit of Heads of Government would simply follow suit, leading to an African leaders' endorsement of what Western nations, especially the US and Britain had always said of Zimbabwe.
The Telegraph report of last Monday said in its headline reporting the AU ministers meeting: "Africa unites to condemn Mugabe's regime."
Associated Press, AP published a story by the Washington Post last Wednesday, that the report, which was tabled "Saturday at a ministerial meeting of the African Union, presents harsh allegations of a clampdown on civil liberties surrounding Zimbabwe's 2002 presidential elections, including arrests and torture of government opponents, lawyers and pro-democracy activists."
African leaders had been expected to vote on its ratification and release last Tuesday. The ballot was cancelled because "Zimbabwe rejected the report and South Africa accepted that they (Zimbabwe) should have time to read it," noted the AP quoting an AU official.
On its part, the BBC had reported last Monday that "the African Union executive council has adopted a report highly critical of Zimbabwe's human rights record.
The report says there is evidence of human rights abuses by the police, and intimidation of the media and judiciary, and illegal land invasions. Zimbabwean officials are reported to have been working hard to keep the report off the agenda of the African Union summit later this week (last week)."
Western diplomats had hoped Nigeria's leadership of the AU would ensure that the Union adopted the report. But when the matter came before the Heads of State, after President Olusegun Obasanjo had assumed leadership as chairman, Obasanjo had to ask Adeniji to provide the Heads of State with clarification as to the decision of the AU Council of Ministers.
Contrary to some media reports, Adeniji informed the Heads of State that the ministers only noted the report and did not adopt it.
Some observers alleged that Nigeria might have later given in to Zimbabwe's quest to suppress the report after all since Foreign Affairs Minister, Adeniji had previously allowed the ministers to consider the report despite Mudenge's strident objections, only for the same Council of Ministers to later advise the Heads of State not to adopt the report.
But a source close to the Nigerian delegation in Addis Ababa explained to The Guardian that "it is absolutely not true that Nigeria backed out of any agreement on Zimbabwe.
The fact is that there are all sorts of high level politicking by many countries as a direct result of Nigeria's high profile in the AU, PRC, NEPAD, etc. It is not unusual to fly these sorts of kites in order to trigger a reaction or ferret out a desired outcome."
Certain sympathetic media reports from the Southern African region also accused some AU secretariat officials and the African Commission for Human and People's Rights for leaking the information on the deliberations of the Council of Ministers to Western media.
According to The Herald of Zimbabwe, the scathing report "was leaked to the British and American media." The paper said The Washington Post, The Telegraph and the BBC wrote stories during the week "claiming that the African Union foreign ministers have adopted the report condemning Zimbabwe, yet the ministers had only noted it."
The paper also alleged that "some AU secretariat officials are being used by the British in its smear campaign against Zimbabwe."
Incidentally, there were also reports on Nigeria tabled at the AU summit, but the Zimbabwean affair had dominated the summit, which had in attendance about 48 African Heads of State.
Sources said it was eventually agreed at the AU meeting that Zimbabwe must respond to the critical report within seven days after the summit just as the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan threw his weight behind the pro-democracy impetus and the quest to have African leaders critically review themselves.
Annan was quoted as saying, "let us pledge that the days of indefinite one-man or one-party governments are behind us."
The UN scribe was also reported as saying, in what many observers see as a veiled reaction to the Zimbabwean crises, "there is no greater wisdom and no clearer mark of statesmanship than knowing when to pass the torch to a new generation."
