Tim Reid and Jonathan Clayton, Times of London, January 27, 2009
President Obama wants a fresh approach to toppling Robert Mugabe and is discussing with aides an unprecedented, US-led diplomatic push to get tough new UN sanctions imposed against the Zimbabwe regime, The Times has learned.
During talks Mr Obama has had with his top Africa advisers in recent weeks, the central idea they focused on was taking the issue of Zimbabwe before the UN Security Council, but for the first time to combine such a move with an intense diplomatic effort to persuade Russia and China not to block the initiative.
According to a senior aide present at the discussions, the goal of taking the issue of Zimbabwe to the Security Council would be to pass a series of “strong” sanctions, including a ban on arms sales and foreign investment. They also want to expand significantly the number of ruling Zanu-PF party officials subject to sanctions.
Last July, after Mr Mugabe was accused of rigging the elections to stay in power, China and Russia, who have significant financial interests in Zimbabwe, vetoed moves to impose UN sanctions. Mr Obama and his aides believe that, with the growing international outcry over conditions there and the devastating loss of life from the cholera outbreak, Beijing and Moscow can now be persuaded at the very least to abstain when the issue of sanctions comes to another vote.
“It is predicated on China and Russia going along and this Administration will certainly undertake a new round of constructive diplomacy with Russia and China on a whole range of options,” the aide told The Times. “It will depend on an arc of Obama diplomacy in the coming months.”
Pressure on China and Russia will also be coordinated with Britain and France at the UN. “To get even an abstention would be a tremendous victory,” the aide said.
A key figure in any new approach will be Susan Rice, Mr Obama’s UN ambassador, who was Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in the Clinton administration and is a Zimbabwe expert.
“Susan is extremely aware of what is going on in Zimbabwe and she feels very strongly that there is a tremendous miscarriage of justice in that country and that it has to end,” the aide said. “Once she has her feet on the ground she is going to turn her attention to this issue.”
During her Senate confirmation hearings earlier this month, Dr Rice said that the US would take a leading role at the UN in tackling the “thorny challenges of peacekeeping in the context of Darfur and Congo and the autocracy in the context of Zimbabwe”.
Mr Obama and Dr Rice are also understood to be anxious that Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, does not agree to a power-sharing deal with Mr Mugabe that has been under negotiation for weeks.
They and other Western diplomats were encouraged by the collapse of talks yesterday that regional leaders had convened to make progress on the main issues blocking the formation of a unity government. Mr Tsvangirai was offered the option of sharing with Mr Mugabe, but the opposition leader refused to accept because he was not given control over the Zimbabwean police—the main tool of oppression in the country.
Leaders of the MDC reacted angrily to claims by southern African mediators that an agreement had been brokered to form a unity government by the middle of next month. They accused the Southern African Development Community (SADC) of trying to railroad them into a deal that kept the main levers of power in Mr Mugabe’s hands.
The US and Britain are anxious that Mr Tsvangirai does not weaken and sign up to a power-sharing deal because the failure to reach an accord helps clear the way to take the issue back to the UN. Zimbabwe will again be discussed at the African Union’s annual summit this week, in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, but little progress is expected to be made.
“We have leverage over Russia and we are working on China,” one diplomat told The Times. “If SADC talks fail, then the African Union fails, then the deal is dead in the water and the way is clear to take the issue back to the Security Council.”
Significantly South Africa, which is viewed by Western diplomats as an “enabler” of Mr Mugabe and unwilling to take him on, has stepped down as one of the Security Council’s non-permanent members and can no longer lobby China and Russia for an alternative approach, which it has done in the past.
Original article
(Posted on January 27, 2009)
Comments
And who engineered the installation of Mugabe and the fall of Ian Smith? Oh yeah, that’s right, the selfsame American Federal government, only with a different President.
This is long overdue.
Let me guess, Obama’s drive to topple Mugabe will include a large increase in foreign aid to Zimbabwe and free food and medicine for its citizens in order to “get them on our side.” This is all a set-up, a pretext for Obama to get involved in his mother continent and start redistributing our wealth to his kin.
Obama knows that Mugabe’s days are numbered and just wants to get his name on the deed.
ive known for some time that south africa has been enabling mugabe. if south africa is supporting that monster then there has to be quite a few monsters in the south african government, as well. i suspect south africa has been using mugabe to distract from the abuses in their own country. getting rid of mugabe will send a strong message to south africa that it will no longer be tolerated as well as removing their convenient distraction. hopefully, obama can do something about sudan as well. as the son of an african he can stand up to china and the middle east on african issues. finally, one area in which i dont mind him playing the “race card”. although one can never truly trust a politician.
Oh Noooooooo! Not sanctions! That will really worry Big Bob. He only has a personal fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars stolen from his country and safely stashed in Swiss banks.
The entire world has already stopped trading with this failed nation. Zim dollars are worth less than toilet paper. How could sanctions possibly hurt a thoroughly destroyed economy like that?
Perhaps with a new government in “Zimbabwe” all those hundreds of thousands of black Zimbabweans who fled to Britain as asylum seekers to escape Mugabe’s persecutions will rush home. I won’t hold my breath.
And will this policy extend to allowing white Rhodesians and South Africans, displaced by racial violence, to immigrate legally to the U.S. and other Western countries in the same way as other persecuted groups? No? I didn’t think so!
The black fans of Mugabe are going to be terribly disappointed with Obama. Surely impoverishing a nation with ten million percent inflation and rigging every election is a small price to pay to stick it to whitey.
This is long overdue.
It’s got to be a huge embarrassment to the SWPLs. Now that a black is in charge, maybe their laughable paralysis is no longer in effect?
Kinda like the mythical white slaveholder, who couldn’t do anything without a black’s help. Except real.
The entire world has already stopped trading with this failed nation. Zim dollars are worth less than toilet paper. How could sanctions possibly hurt a thoroughly destroyed economy like that?
Apparently ALL the world hasn’t stopped, at least the Asian countries haven’t. And in Europe, if Mrs. Mugabe shows up with tens of thousands of U.S. dollars, will she be turned away??
Sanctions? What kind of sanctions do you apply to a primitive tribal society? Refuse to trade glass beads for bird feathers?
So one failed black government will be replaced by another.
Big deal, what’s the difference?
Bottom line: “…China and Russia, …have significant financial interests in Zimbabwe…”
And: “… Mr Obama and his aides believe…Beijing and Moscow can now be persuaded at the very least to abstain when the issue of sanctions comes to another vote…”
I’m sure China and Russia will be willing to negotiate with the obama administration and the UN, defer to blacks, give up their growing interests in Africa, right?
The Russians will negotiate with obama the same way they negotiated with JFK:
“…Kennedy’s secretary of State, Dean Rusk, urged against such a non-conditions-based summit. And later, Kennedy called the summit meeting the ‘roughest thing in my life. (Khrushchev) just beat the hell out of me. I’ve got a terrible problem if he thinks I’m inexperienced and have no guts.’ Indeed, Khrushchev thought Kennedy a weak amateur. Following the summit, Khrushchev built the Berlin Wall and placed missiles in Cuba, an action that led the world to the brink of nuclear conflict…”
http://townhall.com/Columnists/LarryElder/2008/09/04/jfk_democrats_role_model
History Repeats.
Bon
Obama wants to help the ‘brothers over in Africa’. Now being against Robert Mugabe might seem like a positive step for the Obama administration, but if it means distributing our hard-earned wealth to ‘da brothers’, then, well, you tell me.
Obama wants to topple Mugabe? Ha! Sure.
Mugabe will die of old age soon or be killed in a coup. If it’s in a coup it’ll be by the same people pulling Obama’s strings, but the First Brother won’t have anything to do with it.
Yeah right! After all the Whites are kicked out of former Rhodesia, they want Mugabe out. If White farmers would have remained in large numbers yet, Obama would have kept quite and would have let Mugabe the monster do his dark deeds. But now it is blacks who are primarily suffering, so suddenly he has to go. I say let Mugabe stay. Let the blacks feel their own medicine.
Obama is the new big-chief in town. Maybe if he keeps using rhetoric about those like Mugabe, no one will notice.
I spend a lot of time in Zim and know exactly what is going on there - nothing.
Except for the infrastructure remaing from white rule, e.g. roads and highrise buildings, there is nothing.
Nature in all its form is reclaiming the country, and by that I mean that without white parental guidance the poulation is reverting to the stone age, because the land can only support X number of people.
Disease is the order of the day (HIV, cholera and TB).
Also pease allow me a correction to the article above: It’s not South Africa supporting Mugabe, it’s the ANC government. Most S’Africans are horrified at our (so-called) government’s stance.
“The black fans of Mugabe are going to be terribly disappointed with Obama. Surely impoverishing a nation with ten million percent inflation and rigging every election is a small price to pay to stick it to whitey.”
Officially the inflation rate is well over 231,000,000% as of July 2008.
Here is a picture of a Chicken Inn’s prices as of early 2007:
http://i444.photobucket.com/albums/qq161/Delosian/Zimbabwe2007.jpg
Grace mugabe was in Hong Kong recently on a shopping trip spending thousands of US dollars provided by the zim central bank, which is where aid cash is deposited as it is never distributed or used as it should be. She, and her black african bodyguards, attacked photographers in public but will never be taken to task for this as china has a nice deal with mugabe involving minerals, ivory and foodstuff. Since china is now taking eveything from all over africa, surely the question of future aid and development rests with them, and not the west.
Now perhaps that bullet with RM’s name on it will be found and used at last. Or he will be charged and dragged off to the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide, etc. About time too.
“Let me guess, Obama’s drive to topple Mugabe will include a large increase in foreign aid to Zimbabwe and free food and medicine for its citizens in order to “get them on our side.” This is all a set-up, a pretext for Obama to get involved in his mother continent and start redistributing our wealth to his kin.”
Posted by Anonymous
Yes, that is EXACTLY what this is. With Mugabe gone, the US tax dollars can freely flow into Zimbabwe.
“Posted by A. Windaus at 4:29 AM on January 28”
I wouldn’t laugh too hard, those inflationary prices are going to hit home real soon! So, for all my brothers and sisters on Amren, I would start looking to Dr. Ron Paul and his former economic advisors and supporters for some prudent investment advice. Soon, real soon.
One would think this country has enough problems dealing with the failure, criminality, and incapacity of its own black Africans without getting involved in the problems of Zimbabwe or any other part of the African continent.
There’s nothing we anybody else can do for them except let them revert to their normal level of stone age existence.
During the campaign, Obama railed against the war in Iraq, claiming it was unneccesary, costly, etc.,
Now he wants to bring about regime change in Zimbabwe, of all places. What a hypocrite.
Let a hundred flowers bloom on Zimbabwe’s grave. Let a hundred jackals contest over her remains.
I do not understand why everyone is in such a big hurry to get rid of Robert Mugabe. Yes, he is a cruel dictator, but he has always been. I am certain he is neither the worst nor the most cruel that can be found. Certainly, Mr. Mugabe has lost some of his friends in the international media (that helped put him in power)….so you could say he now suffers from bad public relations….a condition slightly more serious than bad breath.
The longer Mr. Mugabe, and people like Mr. Mugabe, are in power more people will die and suffer. If the living that remain want to stay alive, they need to do something about their local dictators. I do not see any reason why the US government should interfere with local self-determination and the normal progress of human events. Do we not have some very serious problems of our own to attend to??
But HOW can there be any problems in Black-ruled Zimbabwe? Everyone knows civilization and its technological and medical benefits really started in Black Africa. Thanks to those untold thousands of Black intellectuals… who gave the world the sciences, mathematical, astronomical and medical knowledge. Generously sharing that storehouse of accumulated medical and scientific learning and knowledge with those evil White Europeans who began to explore Africa. Actually even long before that, sending Black emissaries to the European nations to generously bestow their help on millions of ungrateful, undeserving White Europeans.
Imagine White engineering talent being given credit for harnessing the power of steam to launch the industrial revolution, to power trains, ships. Medical knowledge, thanks to the study of anatomy by African witch doctors… pointing the way to the discovery of germs and bacteria. Black astronomers formulating the understanding of celestial mechanics. Dispelling the absurd notions of an Earth-centered universe, a sun revolving around the Earth. Helping Newton formulate his gravitational theories; generously allowing a White European to get credit. Black geniuses (genii?) teaching Europeans how to make glass, to weave cloth, develop and subsequently utilize iron- and steel-making processes. Africans even teaching the White Europeans to appreciate and write those ageless musical works, with White composers and musicans getting undeserved praise for those magnificent musical pieces and works.
Surely even the most stony-hearted White Supremacist will have to concede Zimbabwe and the other African nations are the most advanced, most cultured nations on this planet. Then, adding insult to injury, evil Whites are finally allowing the teaching of Black History in public schools… thereby forcing Whites to come to terms with reality. That all we are, all we know, all we have, in the end being owed to those magnificant Black African people.
I don’t give a fig WHAT problems Africans in any African country are facing. I say not one more dollar, not one more White life should be wasted in Africa. Africans made their perpetual problems without Whites leading them astray.
Poverty, disease, starvation… all blame can squarely be laid on African people themselves. Too ignorant to listen to White teachings on sanitation, on more effective farming techniques. On practicing birth control to ensure they don’t outbreed their capability to support their people. That’s not even including that automatic African propensity for crime, corruption and cruelity to other people.
“Let me guess, Obama’s drive to topple Mugabe will include a large increase in foreign aid to Zimbabwe and free food and medicine for its citizens …”
Oh, and don’t forget all the refugees, orphans, and AIDS patients we’ll be able to import to enrich our diversity.
“And will this policy extend to allowing white Rhodesians and South Africans, displaced by racial violence, to immigrate legally to the U.S.”
Who wants to emigrate to the US? You now also have a black government, so what’s the essential difference to the ANC?
Obama knows, as anyone with an IQ over 105 knows, that he wins by not offending anyone.
So he’s tossing whites a bone.
Personally, I don’t see the point in having white people in Africa.
Mugabe’s a black nationalist who has the right idea, but cannot implement it.
An interesting point that few people have noted.
Mugabe is pretty much the first black leader to be castigated in the MSM. Even Idi Amin and Bokassa — first-rate thugs, both of them were never subjected to anything approaching liberal-leftie condemnation. Could it be that he is being attacked because he has publicly stated (one many occasions) that he loathes homosexuals?
Does that mean Anglo Zimbabweans will get back their farms?
Obama and Mugabe are soul mates who share a common hatred of whites. This scam is intended to evolve into a food give away program at our expense since one of the top agendas of Obama and the congress is the domestic and world wide Marxist redistribution of wealth; as in the transfer of the earnings of the productive middle class to the unproductive lower class…
To Anonymous:
Obama and Mugabe are soul brothers, you bring up a good point. That’s why, I couldn’t understand why Obama wants to go after an African brother, at first. Obama will make a big noise about regime change in Zimbabwe, from the front door, while shoveling aid to Zimbabwe through the back door.
Let a hundred flowers bloom on Zimbabwe’s grave. Let a hundred jackals contest over her remains.
“Too ignorant to listen to White teachings on sanitation, on more effective farming techniques”
Mr. FED UP: you are still resisting the truth about genetics. The evidence is overwhelming.
Do you still believe that free will, grit, and determination will
I’d be more enthusiastic about trying to depose Mugabe if Ian Smith were still alive to replace him. But since there’s no chance that we’ll restore Rhodesia, why bother?
