---

Foreign Affairs and Defence

If the hon. Gentleman had been here at the beginning of the debate, he would have heard me intervene precisely on that point, and if he waits until the end of my speech, he will hear me mention Botswana. The Prime Minister deserves enormous credit for keeping Zimbabwe on the international agenda. He has not found it easy because he faced some denigration of his efforts, not only by Mugabe, which we would expect, but by some African leaders such as former President Mbeki, who has spent his last few years acting as a cosy buffer of protection for the ZANU-PF regime. As the Foreign Secretary mentioned, when the British Government were determined to get the matter discussed at the UN and called for action from the Security Council, the resolution aimed at isolating Mugabe and his elite and at upholding the will of the people of Zimbabwe as expressed in the election of March 29 was blocked. In a shameful move, South Africa led China and Russia in opposition to the resolution. If it had only been adopted then, we might already be helping to rebuild the economy and institutions of Zimbabwe. I did not think that I would find myself agreeing so wholeheartedly with the outgoing US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, when she said last Friday:"““there has been a sham process of power-sharing talks and now we are seeing not only political and economic total devastation...but a humanitarian toll of the cholera epidemic””." It is clear that the time for talking has now ended. I believe that there is no hope of a power-sharing deal with a dictator who refuses to give up any power. Despite what Jacob Zuma has said this week, and despite the continuing faith of the Tanzanian President in dialogue, we have to be honest and accept what Zimbabweans are telling us: the power-sharing process is dead. I hope that Jacob Zuma will not continue to pander to the views of his hosts in Namibia, where he was recently, which is a long-term ally of Mugabe. I hope that we will soon see something more worthy of his new role as President of the ANC, and that he listens to COSATU—the Congress of South African Trade Unions, which is the voice of the trade unions in South Africa. For those of us who have been calling for international action to support the Movement for Democratic Change and Morgan Tsvangirai, it is heartening that some of the strongest voices are now to be found in Africa. On Sunday, the Kenyan Prime Minister called on the African Union to deploy troops and to intervene to bring an end to the crisis. Botswana, which has already been mentioned, wants to put an embargo on petrol and diesel exports to Zimbabwe, and I believe that that could dislodge Mugabe from power in little more than a week. Zambia has also expressed support for his removal. Although there is always concern that sanctions may end up hurting ordinary Zimbabweans, they are being hurt so much at the moment that I believe that they would support sanctions, and I hope that soon they will be calling for them. All the southern African countries need to accept that they have to uphold the will of the people of Zimbabwe. Mozambique, which borders Zimbabwe, has been shameful. It has done absolutely nothing, and the same is true of Malawi and Namibia. Sadly, the British Government and this country have been prepared to let them get away with their destructive stance for too long. We have continued to pump taxpayers' money to those countries despite their support for tyranny and corruption. That has to stop. African leaders assume that aid will continue to flow regardless of how corrupt or repressed their people are, and they have generally been right because that is what we have continued to do. We have let those countries get away with support for corrupt countries and dictators for far too long. Regardless of the wider impact of the political and diplomatic stance of such countries in shoring up tyranny and corruption, UK taxpayers' money is still being pumped in. I am not talking about food aid, but about the aid to flagship projects, which ends up being seen as helping and supporting the particular president of a country. We must start to link our policies on international development to our policies on foreign affairs, human rights and democracy. There needs to be a much more direct link between the actions taken by nations receiving aid from the Department for International Development and the policy aims of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Even after the jamboree that followed the signing of the so-called power-sharing agreement, Thabo Mbeki came out on television and jubilantly demanded that the world should pile in with financial aid. He has a real nerve to do that. People like Mbeki expect us to be there to pick up the pieces and pay for reconstruction, yet they say that we have no right to comment on the corruption and tyranny that has led to ruin in the first place. He tells the Prime Minister to keep his nose out of Africa, yet he expects us to fork out taxpayers' money with no questions asked. Why do so many southern African leaders and the African Union ruling elite keep asking what the minimum is that they have to do to get UK aid flowing back into Zimbabwe? The question that they should be asking is what more can they do to ensure respect for the democratic will of the people of Zimbabwe. They seem to think that if they pull off some kind of cosmetic change, that will allow ZANU-PF to stay in power and to continue to fleece our taxpayers by persuading us to provide financial support.