Mugabe set for rare visit to Russia

Mugabe set for rare visit to Russia

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By Lebo Nkatazo
Posted to the web: 06/01/2009 21:18:12
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe is planning a working visit to Russia during his annual holiday which ends on January 22, a senior government source said Tuesday.

Mugabe will use the trip, details of which are shrouded in secrecy, to seek closer strategic ties with Moscow, a senior government official told New Zimbabwe.com.

With a power sharing agreement signed with the opposition stalled amid calls from western powers, particularly Britain and the United States, for him to step down, Mugabe “will seek a new alliance with Russia that will secure Zimbabwe’s sovereignty and provide a new front for combating economic sanctions that have created nothing but misery for ordinary people”, according to the official.

The source added, without elaborating, that the “new front” is linked to the “exploitation of a strategic resource that God has given to Zimbabwe and which could be used to give the country a much-needed new lease of life”.

A well-structured injection of between US$5 billion and US$10 billion, Mugabe’s aides believe, can stabilise the country’s economic decline and give the 84-year-old leader some breathing space to pursue an elusive political settlement that he has been battling to forge with the two MDC formations.

Mugabe has not visited Russia since June 1987, and the only other trip he is known to have made before that was a 1985 visit to the Kremlin.

Russia was the last of the world’s super powers to get an embassy in Zimbabwe after independence in 1980. Mugabe always saw the former Soviet Union as an ally of his former rival, the late Joshua Nkomo, and has made little diplomatic efforts to secure a political alliance, initially favouring Britain and now China.

But after Russia joined China in blocking a British and US-sponsored UN resolution imposing sanctions on Zimbabwe last July, and a political stand-off which has accelerated the economic meltdown, Mugabe now sees Russia as a potential strategic partner in warding off a collapse of his government.

New Zimbabwe.com has been told that a potential alliance could be built around a mining deal on a range of precious minerals including diamonds.

Without confirming a date of Mugabe’s imminent visit, the official said the trip was of “strategic necessity” and a direct response to British and US efforts to isolate Zimbabwe through a combination of sanctions and diplomatic pressure.

“It’s about time he took the step. There is no doubt that if he had made it much earlier, the puppeteers and their puppets in Zimbabwe would not be having the field day they are currently having,” said the official, referring to the western powers and domestic opposition to Mugabe which he regularly accuses of being sponsored and manipulated by Britain and America.

The official said if Mugabe is prepared to give mineral concessions to Russia, with an expectation of an upfront payment of at least US$5 billion. Russian experts are said to have already visited Zimbabwe’s Midlands Province where new and densely lucrative diamond deposits have been discovered. Exploratory work has already begun in the area.

“The President will be eager to see if these emergency funds can be used to revive the key sectors of the economy, and of course the other aim is to prevent any government that might take over in the future from auctioning these mining rights to neo-colonial interests,” said the official who declined to be named as he was not cleared to talk with the media.

Mugabe’s courtship of Russia follows a similar trip by his Latin American ally, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who travelled to Russia in July last year, seeking to “guarantee Venezuela's sovereignty, which is now threatened by the United States.”

If Russia hosts Mugabe, President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladmir Putin would be risking aggravating their presently chilly relations with Britain and the United States over the recent Georgian conflict. But with world attention focused on the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, Mugabe may have picked his moment for the Russia trip to perfection.

Mugabe has threatened to form a new government by the end of February with or without the opposition MDC which is still holding out for “key” cabinet portfolios, threatening to undo the September 15 power sharing agreement.

The opposition accuses Mugabe -- in powe since 1980 -- of wrecking a once promising economy by pursuing populist policies, narrowing democratic space and tolerating corruption in his government.
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