UK defends Brown’s Mugabe boycott
UK politicians have defended Gordon Brown’s decision to boycott this weekend’s EU-Africa summit in protest at Robert Mugabe’s attendance.
The prime minister has said he will not sit down at a table with the Zimbabwean leader due to his human rights record, although the UK will still be represented at the summit.
Mr Brown’s decision has not been universally welcomed by European leaders, who fear it undermines the summit’s attempt to establish a new relationship between the European Union and Africa.
Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, criticised Mr Brown’s leaders and said international leaders have to meet people even if they do not approve of them.
“This is what we have to do from time to time,” he said.
But Baroness Amos, who will be representing the UK at the summit, told this morning’s Today programme the prime minister was allowed to stand by his principles.
She said: “Every leader makes his or her own decisions about who they will meet and the circumstances in which they meet them.
“There’s no doubt that this summit would become a media circus if the prime minister of Britain were there with Robert Mugabe.”
The Conservatives are also backing Mr Brown’s boycott and have criticised the summit organisers for inviting Mr Mugabe in the first place.
Shadow foreign secretary William Hague said it was a “shameful episode” for Europe that the Zimbabwean leader should be feted at the summit in Lisbon.
Mr Hague said: “Whilst I support the prime minister’s decision not to attend, now that Mugabe is there, it is important that Baroness Amos lays his crimes bare before all those attending.
“The British people will want to know that these points have been made and that every leader attending the summit from Europe and Africa has had to take heed.”
He concluded: “Mugabe should not go home without being made to feel deeply uncomfortable.”
The Liberal Democrats have also criticised Mr Mugabe’s attendance, arguing it makes a mockery of the European Union’s sanctions regime.
Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesman Michael Moore said: “The devastation wreaked by Mugabe’s brutality, corruption and incompetence has brought Zimbabwe to its knees.
“This summit ought to be focusing on international preparations for a post-Mugabe Zimbabwe rather than on glad-handing with the tyrant responsible for its collapse.
“The priority must be to prepare the ground to support Mugabe’s successors, re-build democracy through an international contact group and securing international funding to repair the ravaged economy.”
Critics of Mr Mugabe’s regime say the Zimbabwean economy has contracted by 40 per cent over the past decade with four in five people now living in poverty.
His human rights record has also been roundly condemned. During clashes with the opposition in spring this year, the Mugabe regime arrested and abducted 600 rivals, hospitalised 300 and killed three.
Last month Mr Brown confirmed he would not attend this weekend’s summit:
The prime minister said: “Given the circumstances of the last ten years and our attempts to give assistance in Zimbabwe, which have been thwarted and resisted, it is not possible for us to attend this summit and sit down with president Mugabe.”
