Zimbabwean negotiators joined hastily arranged talks in South Africa on Wednesday in an effort to ensure a unity government is formed this month.

Party officials said their negotiators were called to South Africa on Tuesday, after the main opposition complained that President Robert Mugabe’s party was delaying and endangering chances that a power-sharing agreement, which has been stalled since September, would finally be implemented.

Last week, regional leaders pressed Mugabe’s ZANU PF and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change to start making their agreement a reality Thursday in parliament by passing a constitutional amendment creating a prime minister’s post.

MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai is to be prime minister and Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, is to remain president in the unity government.

The regional leaders, meeting as the Southern African Development Community, also said Tsvangirai should be sworn in by Feb. 11 and the rest of the unity Cabinet sworn in on Feb. 13.

South African presidential spokesman Thabo Masebe said the negotiators were called to South Africa on Wednesday “to ensure that they are ready to meet all the deadlines that were set by SADC.”

South African President Kgalema Motlanthe is the current chairman of the SADC and former South African President Thabo Mbeki has been mediating among Zimbabwe‘s factions on behalf of the regional leaders’ group.

Zimbabwean lawmakers may not be able to meet Thursday’s deadline for approving the constitutional amendment. Joram Gumbo, ZANU PF’s chief whip in parliament, said acting Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa should have presented the amendment to parliament Wednesday, but was instead in South Africa leading ZANU PF’s negotiating team.

A lawyer for the top opposition negotiator, Tendai Biti, asked a judge to postpone a hearing set for Wednesday in Biti’s treason trial because of the talks in South Africa.

Biti’s trial is one of a number of court cases the opposition says were trumped up to silence its members. The opposition has demanded that such harassment and worse against its supporters must stop to create the right conditions for power-sharing.

The opposition also had called for a fairer distribution of Cabinet and other government posts after Mugabe unilaterally declared the most powerful positions will be filled by ZANU PF members.

Mugabe’s party and leaders of neighboring countries have said the opposition should first enter the government, then resolve outstanding issues. The opposition has largely bowed to that, but wants to ensure its concerns are not ignored.

The opposition said Tuesday that it had been told by ZANU PF officials that they could not take part in meetings meant to fine-tune the unity government agreement “because they have no mandate from (Mugabe) who is attending the AU summit in Ethiopia.”

ZANU PF’s Chinamasa insisted Tuesday that discussions were on track. Mugabe, in a speech at the African Union on Tuesday, said he was committed to forming the unity government.

On Monday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told journalists in Addis Ababa that Zimbabwe‘s newly forged national unity government was an “imperfect” solution, and that it can only resolve the country’s political crisis if Mugabe made further progress. Ban also urged Mugabe to release political prisoners being held in Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe has been in a political crisis since Tsvangirai won the most votes in a March presidential election. Tsvangirai withdrew from a June runoff against Mugabe because of state-sponsored violence against opposition supporters.

The deadlock has kept leaders from addressing a spiraling economic crisis many blame on Mugabe, widespread poverty and food shortages, and a cholera epidemic that has killed more than 3,300 people since August.

(Source)