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20 April 2008
Nairobi – Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party held consultative talks on Friday with Kenya’s newly sworn-in Prime Minister Raila Odinga over the deteriorating political crisis in Zimbabwe.
Tendai Biti, MDC secretary general said they were seeking Odinga's advice on how to deal with the deepening crisis in Zimbabwe, a result of the delay in announcing the results of a March 29 presidential election.
"Kenya is special to us, it is not by accident that we came to the office of the prime minister," Biti told the media in Nairobi.
"The people of Kenya share the pain of the people in Zimbabwe, like we shared the pain with you," he said.
The MDC has launched a diplomatic campaign to rally African leaders' support in the political stand-off at home. The delegation was in Nairobi on its way from Ghana.
The opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has said that he had scored an outright victory over President Robert Mugabe in the presidential polls held three weeks ago, but ZANU PF and independent analysts said that Tsvangirai had not garnered enough votes to avoid a run-off.
Election authorities in Zimbabwe have yet to release the results of the presidential election in which Mugabe, 84, sought a sixth term.
In Kenya, Odinga's claims that President Mwai Kibaki stole the December 27 polls touched off violence that stirred up tribal resentments that claimed at least 1 500 lives and displaced hundreds of thousands of people prompting the pair to launch negotiations that resulted a coalition government that was sworn in on Thursday.
Meanwhile, South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) party president Jacob Zuma said there was no need for him to play a mediating role in the Zimbabwean situation and the Southern African Development Community appointed mediator, President Thabo Mbeki, should continue.
Zuma was speaking on Friday at the ANC headquarters when he met Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg who described the Zimbabwean situation as serious and said there is a need to announce the result expediently.
Zuma said he was not privy to a report in which Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai called for Mbeki's removal as mediator. He, however, said that there is a crisis in Zimbabwe.
"Definitely there is a crisis. It is not normal to have elections and no result weeks later," Zuma said. – ZimOnline.
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