Key Southern African leaders will hold a special summit on Thursday in Mozambique’s capital, Maputo, to discuss the crisis in Madagascar and the power-sharing government in Zimbabwe, officials said.
The security organ of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), known as the Troika, will meet from 3pm GMT on Thursday, a Mozambican Foreign Ministry official told Agence France-Presse.
“There will be Troika meeting tomorrow [Thursday],” he said.
A senior Zimbabwe government official said that President Robert Mugabe had already left Harare to attend the meeting.
“President Mugabe left this afternoon for Maputo to attend an extraordinary summit of SADC, which is expected to discuss the Zimbabwe situation and unfolding events in Madagascar,” the official said in Harare, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The summit will take place following the swearing-in of Mozambican President Armando Guebuza to his second term in office.
Guebuza currently heads the Troika, which also includes Zambia and Swaziland. Zambian President Rupiah Banda will attend the summit, as will South African President Jacob Zuma, their offices said.
Last week SADC foreign ministers met in Maputo where they also discussed Zimbabwe and Madagascar.
The regional bloc has been due to review progress in Zimbabwe’s unity government after a special summit in November broke a deadlock that threatened to sink the deal.
South African mediators have since held talks in Harare among the rival Zimbabwe parties to settle a slate of differences between Mugabe and his partner in the unity government, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.
Tsvangirai’s spokesperson, James Maridadi, said that he did not know about the summit and that the prime minister would not attend.
“The prime minister is currently on leave, and he is not going to the summit. We are not aware of it,” Maridadi said.
It was not immediately clear if Madagascar’s leaders would attend the summit.
Disagreements between the island nation’s four main political groups have scuttled repeated efforts to end the impasse, with de facto leader Andry Rajoelina trampling on previous deals with rivals to form a unity government.
International mediators last week called for elections in Madagascar to end the prolonged political crisis, after Rajoelina took power last year with the army’s blessing, following a wave of public protests. — Sapa-AFP