Sanctions can hardly defuse crisis in Zimbabwe

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(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-07-27 11:45

BEIJING -- French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Friday that the European Union (EU) will continue to support South African President Thabo Mbeki's efforts to mediate the crisis in Zimbabwe.

France's President Nicolas Sarkozy (R) welcomes his South African counterpart Thabo Mbeki at the start of the EU-South Africa summit in Bordeaux July 25, 2008. [Agencies]

"Mbeki's mediation must be supported. There is no other way possible now and everyone in Europe agrees on this," Sarkozy, whose nation holds the rotating EU presidency, told a news conference after the first-ever EU-South Africa summit held in the French city of Bordeaux.

However, when various parties involved in Zimbabwe's political crisis were striving for a solution, the United States on Friday imposed new sanctions against Zimbabwe's government for alleged "politically-motivated violence" following a similar EU decision this week.

The US and EU move, which came when progress was made in resolving Zimbabwe's political crisis, cannot but leave the international community worry about the prospects of the Zimbabwe crisis.

Thanks to efforts by South Africa, the African Union (AU) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Changes, met for the first time in 10 years and signed a deal Monday, committing themselves to ending the crisis through talks as soon as possible.

In response to these positive signs and rare opportunity to solve the crisis, the international community has every reason to encourage the parties concerned, rather than impose tougher sanctions.

As indicated by facts in the past, resorting indiscriminately to sanctions can hardly yield the intended results. The sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe by the United States and EU since 2002 have not brought stability to the country and the region at large, but left the country's economy in stagnation and its people in dire poverty, with a jobless rate of 80 percent, and a per capita GDP of merely US130$.

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