Blacklisted Mugabe invited to Euro summit

Zimbabwe’s blacklisted President Robert Mugabe is to be invited to a summit on European soil later this year – in the hope and expectation that he will refuse to turn up.

A classic piece of European Union diplomacy is designed to avoid a new row over sanctions imposed on Mr Mugabe and more than 90 senior members of his Zanu-PF regime.

The travel ban in Europe and a freeze on assets held in EU countries was a response to EU anger over what Brussels insists was a rigged election in 2002.

But Mr Mugabe did attend a Franco-African summit in Paris at former president Jacques Chirac’s invitation the following year – infuriating most other EU leaders.

Now the incoming Portuguese presidency of the EU says it plans to include Mr Mugabe on the invitation list for an EU-African Union summit in Lisbon in December.

Portuguese officials said they were reluctant to do so – but with Africa a top priority in EU policy, all African leaders and heads of state had to attend.

The summit host – Ghana – is also insisting that Zimbabwe’s leader receives the same courtesy as everyone else.

Today in Brussels the pressure to ease the sanctions for the summit infuriated many Euro-MPs, including members of the Socialist group who discussed the problem with Portuguese officials during a visit to Lisbon last week.

A Socialist Group spokesman said: “We are aware of this diplomatic difficulty because of Mugabe's position. The Socialist Group is not at all happy, but at the same time we want this summit to be a success.

“What is now being planned is a novel piece of European Union protocol - invite Mugabe in the expectation that he will not attend.”

Socialist Group vice-chairman Hannes Swoboda said: “We know that many African countries would find it difficult to be at the summit if Mugabe were not invited.

“The idea is that the African Union will formally invite him, and we hope he will be clever enough not to come, and that other African Union countries will help us to achieving that objective.”

The tactic is being described in Lisbon as a “creative option”, but it may not appease sanctions hardliners such as the UK Government, unhappy at even the formality of an invitation to Mugabe to go to Lisbon – regardless of any pre-cooked plan to produce a rejection.

Many MEPs, including some socialists, also argue that inviting Zimbabwe to attend would not be appropriate.

They point out that, despite the attendance of Mugabe at a Franco-African summit in 2003, that invitation has not been repeated since, and that the last planned EU-African Union gathering was scrapped the same year because of the sanctions.

But Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates, in the EU hot seat for the rest of the year, sees the December summit as a crucial set-piece of his turn at the EU helm – one which could be derailed unless Zanu-PF is asked to attend.

Mr Socrates is now likely to be lobbied hard by his European counterparts to find a less risky form of diplomacy to avoid the EU’s sanctions regime being shown to be toothless.