Senegal's Wade says plans Zimbabwe mediation trip

DAKAR - Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade said on Monday he would travel to Zimbabwe this month to recommend multilateral mediation by African heads of state to try to solve the crisis in the southern African country.

Wade said he wanted to discuss with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe how African leaders, including himself and South African President Thabo Mbeki, could mediate between Mugabe and his opponents, both domestic and international.

"I'm going to go there in two weeks' time ... to talk with him (Mugabe) to see what Africa can do," the Senegalese president told a news conference in Dakar.

Wade said the situation in Zimbabwe was deteriorating, with inflation running at well over 6,000 percent, the highest rate in the world, and basic goods running short.

Mugabe, 83, who has been in power since independence from Britain in 1980, rejects accusations that he has abused human rights and wrecked Zimbabwe's once-prosperous economy.

He accuses Western countries of sabotaging the economy as punishment for his seizure of white-owned farms to resettle landless blacks.

Wade, who like Mugabe is in his 80s, complained that there was no official African Union (AU) position on Zimbabwe and repeated his view that mediation should not be left to South Africa's Mbeki alone.

A grouping of southern African nations has mandated Mbeki to secure a deal on constitutional reform between Mugabe and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change ahead of March 2008 presidential and parliamentary polls.

But Wade, who from his small West African country has often sparred with Mbeki over leadership on African issues, said Zimbabwe should be dealt with on a wider basis.

"Mbeki is a man of goodwill ... (but) we should tackle the problem at the level of several heads of state, including Thabo Mbeki," he said.

Wade said any mediation for Zimbabwe should also bring in former colonial power Britain, which had been party to a 1979 accord on reforms to end land ownership imbalances between blacks and whites in former Rhodesia.

Wade said the British government had stopped compensating white farmers under the land redistribution reform accord, while Mugabe had stepped up seizures of land without redress.

"I think that this method is not acceptable ... the whites should have compensation," Senegal's president said.

Diplomats said the compensation from Britain had been halted because London felt Mugabe's government was no longer respecting its side of the 1979 Lancaster House accord which paved the way for independence.

Wade said the need for mediation in Zimbabwe was urgent.

"There are elections next year. Who will mediate between the government and opposition?" he added, speaking in English.

Wade said disagreements over how to deal with Zimbabwe were threatening an upcoming European Union/African Union summit planned for December in Lisbon, after British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he would not go if Mugabe attended.