EU President Portugal would find it hard to bar Robert Mugabe from an EU-Africa summit and will push ahead with the event despite British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's threat to boycott the event, a source close to the presidency said.
Brown vowed to snub the summit set for Lisbon in December if the Zimbabwean president was invited, accusing Mugabe of "abuse of his own people" and urging the EU to tighten sanctions that already include arms embargoes and travel bans.
But the diplomatic broadside met resistance as a Portuguese source close to the EU presidency insisted Europe's ties with Africa "cannot remain hostage" to the Zimbabwe issue and Zambia forecast an upswell of African solidarity behind Mugabe.
The summit would be the first between the EU and Africa in seven years. Plans for a new set of talks stumbled in the past because ex-colonial power Britain and several other EU states refused to invite Mugabe, prompting the Africans to stay away.
Yet Portugal, which wants the meeting to forge deeper ties between the EU and Africa, suggested the event - a high spot in its six-month presidency - could go ahead without Brown. "It will be very hard not to invite Mugabe. Some African leaders in the African Union might not be willing to come if he is not invited," the Portuguese source said.
"He is the oldest leader in the AU (African Union) and is seen by many as a freedom fighter," he said, noting Mugabe had spent 10 years in jail for opposing white minority rule. "It is likely that if Mugabe comes, Brown will not be in a political position to attend the summit. The question is whether Britain will be represented at a lower level," the source said.
A spokeswoman for Portuguese Foreign Minister Luis Amado said summit invitations had not yet been issued. However the Portuguese Lusa news agency cited a junior Zimbabwean minister as saying Mugabe had been told he was welcome and would attend.
Critics say Mugabe has presided over the collapse of Zimbabwe's economy, now marked by the world's highest inflation rate of about 6,600 percent and joblessness of about 80 percent.
Zambia's President Levy Mwanawasa - head of a 14-nation southern African group seeking to end Zimbabwe's political and economic crisis - said he would boycott the summit if Mugabe was not invited and said other African leaders could do so too. "I will not go to Portugal if Mugabe is not allowed. I don't know how many of us (African leaders) will be prepared to go to Portugal without Mugabe," he said in the Zambian capital Lusaka.
Brown wrote in Thursday's edition of the Independent newspaper that Mugabe's presence risked "diverting attention from the important issues that need to be resolved. In those circumstances, my attendance would not be appropriate".
In a follow-up interview with ITV News, Brown said Britain would call on the EU to extend visa bans and asset freezes on Zimbabwe's elite. "We are prepared to consider further sanctions. There are in fact 130 people or so who are subject to these sanctions. I believe that these sanctions could be extended to the families of people so more people could be under sanctions," he said.
Mugabe, who blames Western powers and especially Britain for his country's woes, is one of those officials subject to an EU travel ban, but that could be suspended to attend a summit.
Portuguese officials have said privately that an invitation had been extended to the African Union (AU) organisation which would then decide whether to let Mugabe come. Lusa quoted Zimbabwe's Deputy Minister of Information and Publicity, Bright Matonga, as saying Mugabe had been invited and would attend "whether Gordon Brown is present or not". "Brown is wasting his time," he added.
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