Kurt Bassuener August 19th, 2008

Today Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa died in a French hospital, having suffered a stroke at the AU summit in Sharm el-Sheikh at the end of June.  The BBC reports:

He came to prominence recently for being one of the African leaders most critical of the violence in Zimbabwe.

US President George W Bush expressed his condolences to Mr Mwanawasa’s family, describing him as “a champion of democracy in his own country and throughout Africa”.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Mr Mwanawasa’s death was “a great loss for the African continent”.

Last year, he quite obviously alluded to Zimbabwe when he said:

“one Sadc country has sunk into such economic difficulties that it may be likened to a sinking Titanic whose passengers are jumping out in a bid to save their lives…Zambia has so far been an advocate of quiet diplomacy and continues to believe in it, but the twist of events in the troubled country necessitates the adoption of a new approach.”

Mwanawasa became increasingly vocal in his criticism of the Mugabe regime through Zimbabwe’s electoral crisis, urging African leaders not to allow a ship laden with Chinese arms for Zimbabwe to disgorge its cargo, stating he sympathized with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai for not wanting to participate in a runoff after an organized campaign of violence aginst MDC supporters and those suspected of having voted for them.  It was widely expected that he would lead the charge to address Zimbabwe at the AU summit earlier this summer, but he suffered a stroke at the venue and never recovered.  The summit, attended by a “re-elected” Mugabe, accomplished nothing other than giving him a stage to strut on, along with probable ICC indictee Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.

Mwanawasa’s democratic performance could hardly be called exemplary; Freedom House rates the country as “partly free.”  While donors and trading partners admire the anticorruption efforts and improved economic performance, civil liberties and political rights are abridged.  It’s likely that if Zimbabwe had imploded less dramatically, Mwanawasa’s criticisms would have been more muted. 

Yet he did step up, and was audible in a growing, if inconsistent, chorus of African voices at least recognizing the catastrophe next door.  Botswana’s leadership, which has been the most consistent in criticism of Mugabe and in democratic practice at home, will feel all the more alone after Mwanawasa’s passing.

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Kurt Bassuener August 19th, 2008

At the special meeting called for NATO foreign ministers in Brussels today to discuss Russia’s invasion of Georgia, an unnamed German diplomat said Georgia should not be on the agenda at all:

A German diplomat said his government did not consider NATO the proper place to discuss a global response to the Georgian crisis, suggesting that the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) were more appropriate venues.

“There were different perspectives” in Tuesday morning’s closed-door meeting, the diplomat said. “Georgia is not a member of NATO. . . . What can NATO do?”

So Germany wants to divert the issue to two organizations in which Russia has a veto, the UN and OSCE, and threby give it in one in NATO as well?

Might the quoted diplomat be…German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier?  He criticized Chancellor Angela Merkel yesterday on Bavarian news radio Bayern 5 for not being more neutral on the Georgia issue.  And yesterday, the BBC reported:

The German Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said that Nato should not suspend the Nato-Russia Council, which exists to encourage dialogue - nor should the West, he went on, exclude Russia from the G8 group of industrial countries or the World Trade Organisation.

“We need open channels for talks,” he said.

As if these venues are the main channels for crisis communications between Russia and the West.  Get real. 

Meanwhile, Deutsche Welle reports that the right and center of Germany’s political spectrum is lambasting former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, now working in the NordStream gas pipeline consortium which is tied with Russian gas giant Gazprom, for blaming the war on Georgia - an assertion that has some basis in Saakashvili’s recklessness, but gives Russia a free pass on occupying Abkhazia or its attacks deep into Georgia. 

The free-market liberal FPD party secretary general Dirk Niebel told the station he thought Schroeder was willing to do anything his employer asked.

 

“[Schroeder’s] one-sided attribution of blame is in line with the motto: He who pays the piper calls the tune,” Niebel said.

Ahem.

Earlier this year, Eric blogged on Steinmeier’s absurd quote that it took “courage not to meet with the Dalai Lama these days,” and avoid annoying a major German trading partner, China.  This seems yet another display of such “courage,” if not by Steinmeier himself, then by someone in the Ministry who is emulating him.

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