In Zimbabwe talks, who will get the real power?

27 July, 2008 in Zimbabwe

source: International Herald Tribune
By Celia W. Dugger
Published: July 26, 2008

JOHANNESBURG: As negotiators for President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai began power-sharing talks on Thursday in South Africa, they confronted one seemingly unbridgeable divide: which man would have the real executive power in a unity government?

Mugabe’s governing party, ZANU-PF, insisted that Mugabe, as the victor in a runoff that has been denounced internationally as a sham, would name any new government, The Herald, a state-owned newspaper, reported Friday.

But the opposition says Tsvangirai, who outpolled Mugabe in March elections and dropped out of the runoff, citing murderous violence against supporters, must be in charge. “Whatever transition we come up with, it must be led by Morgan Tsvangirai,” Thokozani Khupe, vice president of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, said in an interview on Saturday.

A collapse of the talks could lead to an accelerating implosion of Zimbabwe’s economy and the flight of millions more people from Mugabe’s increasingly repressive rule into neighboring countries, potentially destabilizing the region. The Mugabe government’s economic isolation intensified last week as the United States and the European Union tightened sanctions.

But a settlement that left Mugabe or his allies in power would be a blow to democratic aspirations on the continent after an [continue reading]