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Zimbabwe: Elections

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for her kind remarks. I am sure she has noticed that Mr Mandela’s wife, Graca Machel, was one of the signatories to the open letter published last week. We need to be very careful not to appear to put pressure on Mr Mandela to come out publicly while he is here for his 90th birthday celebrations. He must be fully conscious of how powerful his words would be if uttered at the right time. Despite his extreme reluctance to involve himself in political issues at this stage in his life and career, I have no doubt that he must be weighing the pros and cons of this. However, were he to deliver a statement in London, apparently as a result of pressure from us, I think that it would lose a lot of the force that it might otherwise have.