NIGERIA: BRITISH FOREIGN SECRETARY JACK STRAW ARRIVES IN ABUJA FOR FIRST MAJOR INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE ZIMBABWE CRISIS
Record ID:
222950
NIGERIA: BRITISH FOREIGN SECRETARY JACK STRAW ARRIVES IN ABUJA FOR FIRST MAJOR INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE ZIMBABWE CRISIS
- Title: NIGERIA: BRITISH FOREIGN SECRETARY JACK STRAW ARRIVES IN ABUJA FOR FIRST MAJOR INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE ZIMBABWE CRISIS
- Date: 5th September 2001
- Summary: ABUJA, NIGERIA (SEPTEMBER 5, 2001) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) (QUALITY AS INCOMING) (NIGHTSHOTS) 1. WS/LV: PLANE WITH DELEGATES ARRIVING AT ABUJA NATIONAL AIRPORT (2 SHOTS) 0.12 2. VARIOUS OF DELEGATES WALKING DOWN THE RAMP (2 SHOTS) 0.26 3. MV: BRITISH FOREIGN SECRETARY JACK STRAW COMING DOWN RAMP 0.39 4. MV: JACK STRAW WALKING THROUGH AIRPORT LOUNGE 0.46 5. SV: JACK STRAW SIPPING ORANGE JUICE 0.52 6. SV: STRAW TALKING TO JOHN MCKINNON SECRETARY GENERAL OF COMMONWEALTH 0.56 7. SV: JAMAICAN ATTORNEY GENERAL ARRIVING AT HILTON HOTEL 1.06 Initials QUALITY AS INCOMING Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved
- Embargoed: 20th September 2001 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: ABUJA, NIGERIA
- Country: Nigeria
- Reuters ID: LVABU6404ANX9MVXYPJB14UHEU2B
- Story Text: Britain is pinning its hopes on Nigeria's President Olusegun
Obasanjo in crisis talks opening on Thursday to nudge
Zimbabwe into rethinking its controversial land policy that
has sent shock waves through southern Africa.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw arrived in the
Nigerian capital on Wednesday (September 5) at the head of a
high-powered delegation for the first major international
conference on the Zimbabwe crisis.
Nigeria will chair the talks, also including senior envoys
of Australia, Jamaica, Kenya, South Africa and Zimbabwe
itself. All are members of a special committee of the
British-led Commonwealth group on the crisis.
Zimbabwe on Wednesday accepted a land offer from white
farmers aimed at breaking an impasse over President Robert
Mugabe's land reform programme.
In the plan, the white Commercial Farmers Union offered to
drop legal challenges to Mugabe's land reform programme and to
help organise financing to resettle black farmers as part of
the deal.
Some political analysts in Harare said the government's
acceptance of the offer appeared designed to deflect
international pressure at the Abuja talks and at a southern
Africa mini-summit in Harare next Monday.
It was not immediately clear what affect the latest move
in Zimbabwe would have on the talks.
Obasanjo, a bluff former civil war general and ex-military
ruler, will need all his skills as a leading African statesman
to bridge the gulf between Britain and its former Southern
African colony on the land issue.
Despite sending a powerful delegation, British officials
insisted Britain would resist any attempt to anchor the
conference on the land issue or to portray it as a
reconciliation forum.
Britain wants the conference to persuade Mugabe to tone
down his dogged determination to seize white farms to redress
a century-old imbalance in ownership.
Britain's socialist government wants the Zimbabwe issue to
be treated as an international crisis and talks to extend to
human rights and democracy in Zimbabwe.
Harare wants to focus on the land issue and how Britain
can pay for land seized from white farmers.
Mugabe says Britain is obliged under independence
negotiations it hosted to pay compensation for the land to be
seized by the state. But London has ruled out financing land
reform amidst chaos and disregard for the rule of law.
Some regional analysts speculated that Britain could face
pressure from at least the African members of the committee to
come up with a tangible initiative on ending the crisis.
They drew comparisons with Kenya, where Britain in the
early 1960s offered relatively much higher funding for the
land resettlement programme in its former East African colony.
They said Britain had so far given Zimbabwe less than half
what it contributed to Kenya's land resettlement fund, even
though the Kenyan white settler population was just about
60,000 compared to 275,000 at its peak in Zimbabwe.
Britain says it has given Zimbabwe 44 million pounds since
independence in 1980 for land reforms under accords reached at
pre-independence talks in 1979, and is willing to help again
if Mugabe stops pursuing the programme for political purposes.
Zimbabwe has been in crisis since February last year when
self-styled veterans of the nationalist war, encouraged by the
state, seized hundreds of white-owned lands across the
Southern African country.
The chaos has disrupted the economy, unsettled foreign
investment in the country and raised anxiety in neighbouring
countries, notably South Africa.
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