Mbeki rejects idea of regional leaders ignoring Zimbabwe's problems

Aug 24, 2007, 15:46 GMT

Cape Town - South African President Thabo Mbeki on Friday reportedly rejected as 'hostile' a newspaper report that leaders from southern Africa recklessly ignored Zimbabwe's problems in the interests of solidarity.

Mbeki, in his online weekly newsletter, said the report by the Johannesburg-based Business Day that Southern African Development Community (SADC) leaders, who met at a summit in Zambia recently, were divided over the embattled country, was 'a wholly fabricated story.'

'The hostile allegation that our countries have recklessly turned their eyes away from the problems of Zimbabwe, because of the imperatives of solidarity, has always been nothing more than a product of propaganda, which all thinking persons would recognize as such.

'The reality is that in a very real sense the problems of Zimbabwe are our problems, in the same way that the problems of the rest of Southern Africa are problems for Zimbabwe as well,' Mbeki said.

The South African leader, who has often been criticized for his approach of 'quite diplomacy' toward his country's northern neighbour, said the SADC summit had in fact accepted a report on the Zimbawe economy and a proposal that finance ministers would work toward interventions.