Mugabe’s speech at global peace forum cancelled

By Violet Gonda
16 December 2005

A paper by Robert Mugabe entitled: Horrors Of Civil War: An African Perspective,suffered a setback when his address was cancelled last minute by organisers at the Perdana Global Peace Forum because of poor participation.

Mugabe is in Malaysia to attend this Forum set up by former Malaysian Prime Minister and long time friend, Mahathir Mohammed.

A report emailed to SW Radio Africa by the New Straits Times quotes a spokesperson for the Perdana Leadership Foundation, the organiser for the Forum saying, “The atmosphere at lunch would not have been suitable for a head of state."

Organisers were forced to change the slot at last minute due to poor attendence.

The New Straits Times said Mugabe had requested to speak at the forum at the last-minute and the only slot available was Friday’s lunch. He was scheduled to give a 30-minute speech to the participants but was inexplicably replaced at the last minute by Buddhist scholar Dr Chin Kung.

Organisers were apprehensive that Mugabe’s talk might not be well attended. One source said, "It was a difficult decision but rather than have no one in the hall, the organisers decided to cancel it." It was claimed many participants were off for Friday's prayers.

In the past few months Robert Mugabe has enjoyed the irony of participating in international conferences on food security, press freedom and now he is in Malaysia to talk about peace and perhaps it is not too surprising that nobody wanted to attend.

The former Malaysian Prime Minister had to defend Mugabe publicly and argue for his right to speak

In his press conference Thursday, Dr Mahathir Mohamed was questioned on the relevance of Mugabe’s presence at the peace forum. He replied that the forum made no distinction among its speakers.

He said, "Everybody can attend. If he wants to say how good it is to be a dictator, he can.”

Although Mugabe failed to address participants at the forum he told a small group of Zimbabweans in Kuala Lumpur that the regime will crush any opposition-led mass revolt against his government.

State radio said Mugabe told Zimbabweans that a faction of the splintered MDC led by Morgan Tsvangirai unlawful acts to push a British agenda of a regime change in Zimbabwe will not be entertained.