Burkina Faso: Demarche on Zimbabwe Talks

C O N F I D E N T I A L OUAGADOUGOU 000694 AF/W FOR EPLUMB, AF/S SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECLASSIFY ON 7/28/2028 TAGS: PREL SADC UV ZI SUBJECT: Burkina Faso: Demarche on Zimbabwe Talks Reftel: State 079617 Classified by Charge DBrown for reasons 1.4 (b)(d) ¶1. (U) Charge presented reftel points to MOFA Cabinet Director Vincent Zakane on Sunday, July 27. ¶2. (C) Zakane expressed agreement with several of reftel's points with one critical difference: while the USG was in favor of a transitional coalition government between Vice President Mujuru and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai allowing Mugabe to leave his position "with dignity," the Government of Burkina Faso (GOBF) presently envisaged a coalition government between Mugabe and Tsvangirai with no presumption that Mugabe would leave government. Zakane added, however, that the GOBF position regarding a coalition government in Zimbabwe was still under development. The Role of African Union in Zimbabwe Crisis: Inconsistencies in Burkinabe Views -------------- ¶3. (C) Zakane was somewhat inconsistent regarding the African Union's (AU) role in assisting to resolve the crisis in Zimbabwe. On the one hand, Zakane appeared almost dismissive of an important role for the AU, emphasizing that South African President Thabo Mbeki was the facilitator for talks (on behalf of the Southern African Development Community (SADC)),and that AU participation should be clearly subordinated. (Comment: Zakane may consciously or subconsciously be making a parallel to Burkina Faso's President, Blaise Compaore, who as current Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) President has also been designated as facilitator of the Cote d'Ivoire peace process. In this context, the AU has had effectively no substantive role, and even the role of the UN Secretary General's special representative for Cote d'Ivoire has been very subordinated to that of Compaore. End comment.) ¶4. (C) On the other hand, Zakane - as he had done in an earlier conversation - urged that the United States work through the AU to gain African support for U.S. positions vis-a-vis Zimbabwe. He again asserted that the European Union had angered several African countries by taking positions on Zimbabwe at its recent Africa Summit in Lisbon (in December 2007) in ways that "ignored the African Union." Zakane asserted that, should the United States work exclusively through the UN system without reference to the AU, it risked creating an impression that non-Africans were dictating to Africans how they should handle one of the continent's most important issues. Instead, he advocated, the UN and AU should work together to "harmonize as much as possible" their respective positions regarding Zimbabwe. This, he added, would also be consistent with the South Africa-proposed UN Security Council Resolution 1809, which was adopted in April 2008 and which, in Zakane's view, created a "rule" that the "UN should work cooperatively with the AU." ¶5. (C) Recalling an earlier demarche presented by Charge, Zakane expressed disappointment that the United States had not supplemented its leading role in seeking a UN Security Council resolution on Zimbabwe with a more active diplomacy in the AU to convince the AU to take a firmer line on Zimbabwe. Zakane at first even suggested that the rejection of the U.S.-led resolution (due to a veto by Russia and China) was in part due to a "lack of coordination with the African Union." ¶6. (C) The normally reserved and polite Zakane, perhaps stepping back from his surprisingly direct criticism of a key ally, the United States, then added that perhaps the UN resolution was "not such a bad idea after all." Zakane had felt that the United States had been taking a risk to propose the resolution because - if it failed - it might make Mugabe so proud that he would unleash even more violence against his political opposition. Instead, the UN resolution, even though not adopted, had been a useful "warning to Mugabe from the international community." Brown