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Zimbabwe: Elections

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her first remarks. I say to her and to the noble Lord, Lord Howell, that we all share the frustration that we have not been able to do more. This unites us; it is not a matter of pride that we should still be discussing President Mugabe as an individual in office, despite all that has happened. Use though he does the word ““decisively””, I suspect that the noble Lord, Lord Howell, does not envisage military action. No parties in Zimbabwe have asked for military action. There is a full understanding that at this time that would be counterproductive for all sorts of reasons. We are discussing the most effective way to bring pressure on a rogue regime, the illegitimacy of which is quite beyond doubt. In that regard, we are probably in much the same place and can learn from each other what we might do to enhance those pressures. First, during the end of last week and the weekend, Zimbabwe’s neighbours in southern Africa went to the press one after the other and said that the intimidation level was making open and free elections all but impossible. That has created a potential coalition of SADC, the AU and the UN to allow us to take action against Mugabe on a scale that was previously impossible. For all his talk of sanctions, they were, as the noble Lord, Lord Howell, says, actually quite limited, against a handful of 130 individuals, and not particularly deep and wide. We now have the opportunity, first in the European Union, to dramatically deepen those sanctions and target bank accounts held not just in Europe, but globally, and look at the possibility of preventing the families of those who have committed these crimes being able to enjoy scholarships or travel aboard. Each individual who has had a hand in this illegitimate second round must realise that they are open to the possibility of European and other international arrest warrants. None of them can travel easily without the possibility, at a customs point somewhere, of the hand of the law coming down on their shoulder and their being told that a European or other arrest warrant has been issued for them. Their actions are making them isolated criminals who have very few places to go outside Zimbabwe. I reassure the noble Lord that this is an illegitimate regime in the view of this Government. As I said to the press this morning without the benefit of knowing what the South African lawyers said, by going beyond the constitutional requirement for a second round within 21 days because of efforts to manipulate the result, President Mugabe was governing on borrowed time and no longer within the bounds of his own constitution. He now faces the fact that the African Union does not under its own rules allow presidents who are not elected by democratic means to take their seat. President Mugabe faces the fact that most of his SADC neighbours have confirmed that his conduct of this election has not been within its own principles. We therefore face a different context, where the possibility of new pressure is real. There remains the prospect of Commonwealth discussion of this matter. I have been in repeated contact with the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, but as I have said previously, we are a little impaired by the fact that Zimbabwe is not suspended from the Commonwealth, as are, for example, Pakistan or Fiji, but has resigned from it. African countries hesitate to bring the Commonwealth back into something that they think is better solved by SADC, the AU and the UN. We are looking at the support that we may need to give Zimbabweans in this country, particularly at the ban on refugees taking up work.