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Zimbabwe opposition leader insists any deal give him real power
Celia W. Dugger, New York Times
August 16, 2008

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/world/africa/17zimbabwe.html?ref=world

The leader of Zimbabwe's opposition - in a feisty and jovial mood - said on Saturday in his first interview since he began power-sharing talks with President Robert Mugabe almost a month ago that he will not agree to any deal that does not give him the authority to effectively govern his economically ruined homeland.

"It's better not to have a deal than to have a bad deal," said Morgan Tsvangirai, the former trade union leader who has been Mr. Mugabe's nemesis for almost a decade.

Mr. Tsvangirai was clearly sending a forceful message to both Mr. Mugabe and President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, the mediator of the talks, about the limits of his willingness to compromise. After three days of intensive negotiations that adjourned on Tuesday, the protagonists have again begun conferring with Mr. Mbeki here on the sidelines of a meeting of southern African leaders about how to get talks moving again.

Mr. Mugabe, whose re-election in a June run-off after 28 years in power was widely seen as a sham, took his place this morning on a dais crowded with other heads of state, but he did not receive his usual adulatory welcome. Dignitaries from across the region were silent, even somber, as the presidents strode into the hall.

Mr. Mbeki told the assembled leaders that he is trying to engineer a final agreement this weekend. And the pressure on him to deliver a deal is evident. Just outside the convention hall where the Southern African Development Community had gathered, there was a raucous anti-Mugabe demonstration of trade unionists allied with Mr. Mbeki's own governing party.

But Mr. Tsvangirai, seen by some African leaders and Western diplomats as having the only legitimate claim on the presidency after besting Mr. Mugabe in a credible March election, said the most basic issue of how he and Mr. Mugabe would share power remains unsettled.

George Charamba, Mr. Mugabe's press secretary, said in an interview Thursday that in any power-sharing government Mr. Mugabe would remain as head of the government and in charge of the cabinet - conditions Mr. Tsvangirai said were untenable.

Mr. Tsvangirai said it was acceptable to him if Mr. Mugabe retained the title of president with a role in overseeing the government. And Mr. Tsvangirai is willing to split the cabinet posts between his and the governing party. But all the cabinet ministers would need to report to him, he said. Only a coherent governing structure would enable Zimbabwe to attract the aid from international donors that is essential to rebuilding Zimbabwe's shattered economy, he said.

"Who is in charge of the cabinet?" Mr. Tsvangirai asked. "To whom do all these ministers report? Can you dismiss them if they breach? It's fundamental."

After years in which Mr. Mugabe, 84, and Mr. Tsvangirai, 56, never met, they have spent a lot of time together recently.

Mr. Tsvangirai described Mr. Mugabe as physically frail, mentally sharp - and paranoid about the intentions of the British in particular and the West in general to bring him down in "conspiracies that do not exist," as Mr. Tsvangirai put it.

"I've joked with him," said Mr. Tsvangirai. "I've talked to him. I've tried to put sense to him. But he is adamant. I've even suggested to him that perhaps it's time for him to give up - straight in the face."

Mr. Tsvangirai is not alone in wishing Mr. Mugabe would let go of power. Mr. Mugabe's two harshest critics in the region were absent at the meeting Saturday. Botswana's president, Seretse Khama Ian Khama, boycotted it on grounds that Mr. Mugabe's presence there would endow him with a legitimacy he did not deserve. And President Levy Mwanawasa of Zambia was still in a Paris hospital after suffering a stroke.

But Zambia's foreign minister, Kabinga J. Pande, in a speech on his president's behalf, suggested the integrity of the regional body of southern African leaders itself was at stake in the Zimbabwe crisis. Mr. Pande described events in Zimbabwe as "a serious blot on the culture of democracy in our subregion."

Zimbabwean authorities on Thursday temporarily blocked Mr. Tsvangirai from boarding a flight to Johannesburg, saying he did not have proper travel documents. Officials in Mr. Mugabe's party accused Mr. Tsvangirai of taking his marching orders from American and European diplomats in the talks.

Mr. Tsvangirai's party, in turn, accused governing party officials and intelligence agents of trying to recruit opposition members of Parliament and released a roll call of more than 100 of its supporters who it said were killed in state-sponsored violence during the election season.

Asked Saturday what he would say to Mr. Mugabe if he was sitting next to him, Mr. Tsvangirai patted the couch in his hotel room and said: "I'll say, 'Old man, you're out of touch. You're out of place. Look around you. Who of your age is around?"

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