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Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe will boycott EU-Africa
summit starting April 2-3 2014,
after
his wife Grace, was denied a visa to enter Europe. Harare had
earlier last Friday urged the African Union to shun the summit for failing to
invite all the Africa bloc's leaders and lift a ban on Zimbabwe's first lady.
But diplomats in Brussels were unfazed by the call for a boycott by a country
that is in the line to chair the African Union next year. "We see
no risk" of a boycott of the summit which gathers 90 nations from both
continents, including 65 heads of state and government, said a senior official
speaking on condition of anonymity. Mugabe and his wife remain targeted
by an EU travel ban but the restriction can be suspended temporarily to allow
the head of state to attend international forums. "We have been
discussing this for some time. We have reached agreement and Zimbabwe has been
invited but no spouses have been invited," the EU official said.
The EU ambassador to Harare, Aldo Dell'Ariccia, said when Zimbabwe asked
for a visa for Mugabe's wife "they were told she should apply through the
normal channels". "The EU is just following it's legal
framework and there can't be any movement from that position," said
Dell'Ariccia. Mugabe's spokesman on Tuesday said the EU's decision was
"very strange". "What God has put together the EU is
trying to separate," said George Charamba in the state controlled daily,
The Herald. "Do they expect the President to respect the EU and disrespect
his own marriage?" Mugabe was in January elected one of the two
deputy chairmen of the African Union, and he will automatically chair the
organization next year. The EU has also refused to invite Sudan,
although the Brussels official said the African Union was free to invite its
president, Omar al-Bashir. Bashir is wanted by the ICC for war crimes,
crimes against humanity and genocide related to the conflict in the Darfur
region of Sudan.
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