Zimbabwe foreign minister: UN trip a 'provocation'

HARARE, Zimbabwe — Zimbabwe's foreign minister on Friday sharply criticized as "a provocation of the highest order" an attempt by the U.N. torture investigator to visit Zimbabwe and investigate alleged attacks by thugs linked to the ruling party on its opponents.

Manfred Nowak had flown to Zimbabwe on Wednesday, saying it was at the invitation of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, but was held at the airport overnight and returned the next morning to South Africa. Zimbabwean Foreign Minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi dismissed Tsvangirai's invitation as meaningless.

"The invitation by the prime minister was a nullity," he told a news conference in Harare.

The comment raises further questions about how much power Tsvangirai wields in the perilously fragile unity government. The longtime opposition leader joined the government with President Robert Mugabe in February but withdrew from Cabinet earlier this month after accusing Mugabe's party of human rights violations.

Mugabe, who has been in power for nearly three decades, is accused of trampling on human rights and democracy and holding the international community in contempt.

The U.N. investigator said he had a meeting scheduled Thursday with Tsvangirai, even though other Zimbabwean officials had told him he was not welcome and should come later.

"What he did is unprecedented in the history of U.N. protocol by forcing himself on a country," said Mumbengegwi, a ranking ZANU-PF member. "They wanted to create a diplomatic incident."

Upon returning to South Africa on Thursday, Nowak used almost the same language, calling his treatment a "serious diplomatic incident" as well as alarming evidence of the split in Zimbabwe's coalition government.

Tsvangirai has stuck with the so-called unity government, saying it is the only way to rescue Zimbabwe from economic ruin and political violence.

Amnesty International's Zimbabwe researcher, Simeon Mawanza, said Nowak's barring reflects an "increased level of desperation among those forces who are opposed to the unity government."

On Friday, foreign ministers from Mozambique, Swaziland and Zambia — members of the Southern African Development Community — were scheduled to meet separately with Mugabe and Tsvangirai in efforts to heal the split in the government.

Tsvangirai told reporters he met with the foreign ministers for nearly an hour and they discussed convening an extraordinary summit of the regional bloc on the Zimbabwe impasse.