Higher and Tertiary Education Minister and senior ZANU PF official Stan Mudenge said MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai did not invite sanctions to the country.

Mudenge on Thursday narrated the origination of sanctions  to delegates attending a one-day workshop to deliberate on possible avenues in repayment of the country’s debts, and in the process eliminated  Tsvangirai from the controversial sanctions equation.

“I was then the Foreign Affairs Minister when I was invited for a meeting by members of the European Union in Brussels Belguim on 19 December 2001 which was led by Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel, when they talked of their decision to put Zimbabwe under sanctions. They did not hide their point as they clearly said they did not want Mugabe led government because he had taken away their land, and Tsvangirai was not there. They said they were no longer trusting Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party, adding that for them to get rid of Mugabe they had to make the Zimbabwean people suffer through imposing sanctions on them. The sanctions were targeted to the ordinary Zimbabweans so that they would revolt against the ZANU-PF led government because of the land reform.

“I have said this to my colleagues in my party, cabinet, parliament and continue to say so. What we require from Tsvangirai is to go and tell the British that he is not part of their agenda (obva ageza maoko). We want him to play his party by telling them that they should remove the sanctions since they have said he has the power to do so,” said Mudenge.

Mudenge is a ZANU-PF politburo member, former Minister of Foreign Affairs and a senior ZANU-PF official who has been in cabinet since 1980.

Last month while addressing the house of commons British foreign secretary David Miliband said that UK would be guided by advice from the MDC on whether the sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe would be lifted or not.

“We have to calibrate our response to the progress on the ground, and, above all, to be guided by what the MDC says to us about the conditions under which it is working and leading the country,” Miliband said.

The statement by Miliband has given ZANU-PF an excuse not to implement the GPA aggreement temrs.The liberation party has resolved to stop any reform saying Tsvangirai should call for the removal of sanctions.

(Source)