Mugabe agrees to Tsvangirai talks

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By Staff Reporter

ISOLATED Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe could soon be meeting with his arch-enemy -- opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, reports from England said.

The Sunday Times newspaper said Mugabe had been "forced into talks" by African leaders during last week's African Union summit in Libya.

"The initiative, aimed at pulling Zimbabwe back from the brink of economic and social disaster, has been launched by Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo," The Sunday Times reported.

The report said Obasanjo had suggested to Mugabe at the meeting that a respected retired president from southern Africa could mediate during the talks. Mugabe is described as being "reluctant" to hold talks with Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

Obasanjo said: "I persisted, and he agreed a facilitation should take place."

Obasano is said to favour former Mozambican president Joaquim Chissano as mediator. Chissano was best man at Mugabe's wedding to his second wife, Grace, in 1996.

Obasanjo said he had already sold the idea to Tsvangirai the previous week in a meeting held in Abuja.

Tsvangirai said he hoped the talks would lead to a "road map to legitimacy", and see his party sharing power with Mugabe's ruling Zanu PF.

Mugabe had no choice but to negotiate, claimed Tsvangirai. "He is in a corner. He has no fuel, no foreign currency, no food -- the country is really at a halt."

Mugabe has been fighting a political storm after soldiers and police pulled down thousands of houses in a "clean up" operation code named Operation Murambatsvina. On Friday, Mugabe was meeting with United Nations special envoy Anna Tibaijuka to discuss his slum clearence programme which has been criticised internationally.

Human rights groups say the "clean up" operation displaced close to a million people. Mugabe's government has set aside $3 trillion Zimbabwe dollars (£191m) to build close to 1,2 million houses by 2008. Mugabe's opponents question the viability of the project as the country has a critical shortage of foreign currency to pull the reconstruction through.

Mugabe has also been opposed from within his own party after former MP Pearson Mbalekwa quit Zanu PF last week in protest at the "callous and inhumane" treatment of poor Zimbabweans by Mugabe's government.
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