Mugabe
ABUJA, Nigeria (AP):
BARRED FROM a summit of Britain and its former colonies, Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe dominated its tense opening Friday, with British Prime Minister Tony Blair urging African leaders to hold the line on the nation's suspension from the Commonwealth.
Isolated at home, Mugabe shrugged off the international pressure to reform his troubled South African country.
"What is it to us?", he said of the 54-nation Commonwealth, addressing thousands of party loyalists in Zimbabwe. "It is a club. There are other clubs we can join."
The Commonwealth has barred Zimbabwe from its decision-making councils since 2002, when Mugabe was widely accused of using force and fraud to win re-election.
Western nations and rights groups at home charge Zimbabwe's two-decade leader with silencing his country's opposition and media, and blame his seizure of white-owned farms for fostering acute food shortages and economic upheaval there.
But several African members of the Com-monwealth, including Mozambique and Malawi, are campaigning for Zimbabwe's reinstatement insisting that dialogue and engagement, not isolation, will bring about change.
Blocked from their hoped-for quick agreement on Zimbabwe, leaders handed the contentious issue to a six-strong committee.
Australia, Canada, India, Jamaica, Mozambique and South Africa were charged with holding separate talks over the next 24 hours, coming back with recommendations on "what kind of benchmarks should be put in place to evaluate the suspension," New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said.
In Zimbabwe, Mugabe told his ruling party's annual conference that his country might pull out of the Commonwealth of its own accord.
Commonwealth leaders, meanwhile, elected Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKin-non, a New Zealander, to a second four-year term, defeating Laksh-man Kadirgamar, a former Sri Lankan foreign minister.
Several African nations had reportedly been unhappy with McKinnon over what they regarded as his sometimes-patronising attitude towards Africans.
Assignment of the Zimbabwe dispute to a committee is meant to free other summit leaders for talks on global issues free trade, terrorism and HIV/AIDS.
Opening the summit Friday, Britain's Queen Elizabeth II focused on those global crises: "Poverty, hunger, environmental degradation, the scourge of HIV/AIDS, the lack of educational opportunities, are all among the legacies which the world has not been able to overcome."
"They continue to threaten global stability just as the menace of terrorism and unresolved conflict posed new and sinister challenges to it," said the queen, on her first trip to Nigeria since 1956.
