MDC likely to pull out of talks by next week

By Tichaona Sibanda
16 October 2007

The Tsvangirai led MDC on Tuesday gave a clear hint it may pull out of the talks as early as next week when its head of Foreign Affairs said the ‘pull out has long been overdue’.

It’s reported the party is waiting for its leader Morgan Tsvangirai to fly back home at the end of the week from a trip to North America before making the announcement.

Party insiders report that the opposition MDC has compiled a damning dossier linking Zanu-PF to a number of deaths of its supporters killed or tortured and jailed in the period since the mediation talks began months ago.

Asked to comment on reports his party was contemplating pulling out of the talks before the end of this month, Professor Elphas Mukonoweshuro said ‘next week is very far away in politics, the process (pulling out) has already started’.

‘If we are going to pull out, there have to be concrete reasons and strong grounds why it will not make sense to continue when our members are being bludgeoned across the length and breathe of the country,’ Mukonoweshuro said, giving credence to the existence of the dossier.

Mukonoweshuro said his party has in the last few months been forced into a situation where they cannot go into the rural areas to brief their members on the progress of the talks. He said Zanu-PF has not been sincere because it has employed two strategies; that of bludgeoning the opposition to make it weak and at the same time taking part in the negotiations.

‘The sentiments of the party are that it is unreasonable to continue to pretend that everything is normal when in actual fact at every point in turn, Zanu-PF demonstrates its very cynical disregard and contempt for both the process and Mbeki as the mediator and the opposition,’ Mukonoweshuro added.

There are also strong indications the hierarchy of the party will meet over the weekend to decide on destiny of the mediation talks. An overwhelming majority of its senior officials and rank and file members have been imploring the party to pull out of the talks because of the brutality against its activists.