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Zimbabwe snubs Commonwealth
ABUJA, Nigeria -- Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has snubbed a Commonwealth meeting set up to consider imposing tougher sanctions against the African state. Nigeria, which is hosting the talks with the leaders of South Africa and Australia, said Mugabe had decided at the last minute to boycott the meeting because he felt "he was going to be court-martialled in Abuja." The Commonwealth suspended Zimbabwe from its meetings for 12 months in March but stopped short of full suspension after an election widely condemned as rigged. The talks were due to go ahead on Monday without Mugabe's involvement. "(New) sanctions now look inevitable," one diplomat told Reuters after Mugabe's boycott decision became public. "Mugabe has hardly spoken to anyone in the Commonwealth since the symbolic sanctions were imposed on his country in March. "Everyone thought his agreement to come signalled a change of attitude, but it seems that is not case." Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who is chairman of the talks, told Australian radio: "His (Mugabe's) unwillingness to accept an invitation issued in good faith shows a level of indifference on his part to the views of the Commonwealth. South African President Thabo Mbeki, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and Howard have been asked by the Commonwealth to recommend what action should be taken against Zimbabwe. "It would have made our job easier if he had been here," Obasanjo said. In March "symbolic" sanctions were imposed on Zimbabwe following the hotly disputed re-election of Mugabe. Commonwealth observers and the main Zimbabwe opposition said the vote was rigged and political violence has continued since. The European Union, the United States and Switzerland imposed limited travel and investment sanctions against Mugabe's top government officials. Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change and Mugabe's main rival in the poll, said the Abuja meeting had to revisit the issue of political legitimacy in Zimbabwe. "Mugabe is an illegitimate head of state and the crisis engulfing Zimbabwe, that is affecting hundreds of thousands of ordinary Zimbabweans, cannot be tackled effectively unless democratic legitimacy is restored," Tsvangirai said in a statement issued on Sunday. "The objective of the leaders of the troika should be to pressurise Mugabe to step down." Zimbabwe has been gripped by a political and economic crisis since the government launched a campaign in 2000 to seize white-owned farms for redistribution to landless blacks.
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