[R-G] 2 Vetoes Quash U.N. Sanctions on Zimbabwe

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/12/world/africa/12zimbabwe.html>
July 12, 2008
2 Vetoes Quash U.N. Sanctions on Zimbabwe
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

UNITED NATIONS — An American-led effort to impose sanctions against
Zimbabwe failed in the Security Council on Friday, with Russia and
China exercising a rare double veto to quash a resolution that they
said represented excessive interference in the country's domestic
matters.

The United States, having earlier in the week mustered the nine votes
needed to pass the sanctions, stalled on bringing the resolution to a
vote until it became absolutely clear that Russia was determined to
stop it. Once the Russians announced on Friday that they would
exercise their veto, the Chinese, often leery of taking a lone stand
on delicate human rights issues, followed suit.

"The key thing is that the Russians decided to vote against it," said
John Sawers, the British ambassador to the United Nations. "The
assessment here is that China would not have vetoed it on its own
because they have a range of conflicting interests at stake."

Among other issues, China's reluctance to criticize the human rights
records of African governments it trades with has come under
international criticism as the Olympics in Beijing draw near. The
United States and its allies supported sanctions as a way of getting
President Robert Mugabe to take seriously mediation efforts to bring
the opposition into the government.

Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to the United Nations, was
particularly scathing in his remarks about Russia, saying that Moscow
had supported a joint statement criticizing the situation in Zimbabwe
by the leaders of the Group of 8 industrialized nations meeting in
Japan this week. But he also singled out President Thabo Mbeki of
South Africa as a target for barbed remarks.

"The U-turn in the Russian position is particularly surprising and
disturbing," Mr. Khalilzad said in remarks to the Security Council,
saying it raised questions about Russia's reliability as a partner.

The United States proposed an arms embargo, the appointment of a
United Nations mediator, and travel and financial restrictions against
Mr. Mugabe and 13 top military and government officials. The Council
has moved away from broad trade sanctions in recent years because they
were considered too harmful to the civilian population.

The move for sanctions came after a June 23 agreement by all 15
Security Council members on a statement criticizing pre-election
violence and saying that it was impossible to hold free and fair
elections in Zimbabwe.

In the first round of elections, on March 29, the opposition leader,
Morgan Tsvangirai, won more votes than Mr. Mugabe, nearly 48 percent
compared with about 42 percent for the president, according to the
official tally. But Mr. Tsvangirai withdrew from the second round
after a campaign of killing and intimidation directed at his
supporters.

Thomas Pickering, the United States ambassador to the United Nations
from 1989 to 1992, said that convincing the Russians was usually the
key to avoiding a veto on issues involving human rights.

"If you can get the Russians, you can move the Chinese to an
abstention," he said, noting that China usually only exercises its
veto on issues involving Taiwan or the use of force. "They don't want
to be the odd man out on a veto."

Russia and China do not often exercise their veto together, the last
time being in January 2007 when they blocked a Council effort to
criticize human rights violations in Myanmar.

Russia worked to bring the Chinese along on the veto on Friday, one
senior diplomat said.

The United States and its European allies have been trying to push
more issues of good governance and democracy onto the Security
Council's agenda in recent years, said Mr. Sawers, the British
ambassador. They find themselves opposed by "those with an
old-fashioned and literal view that the affairs of a country are a
matter for itself, and the Security Council should not intervene," he
said. "The Russians and Chinese have not been comfortable with that
and the vote today reflects that."

The Security Council's mandate specifies that it should only deal with
matters that are a threat to international peace and security, and the
differing sides on the resolution vote took opposite views of whether
Zimbabwe constituted such a threat.

Russia had indicated all week, without committing itself, that it was
willing to show some flexibility on the issue, Mr. Khalilzad said, but
at noon on Friday announced that it would exercise its veto power as a
permanent Council member. "They decided to make a point on this issue,
to say 'nyet,' " Mr. Khalilzad said. "Something happened in Moscow."

Even though the United States knew at that point that it would lose,
it decided to proceed with the vote anyway, to force the Russians and
eventually the Chinese to publicly take a stand in support of Mr.
Mugabe and the violence promulgated by his supporters to steal the
election.

Vitaly Churkin, Russia's ambassador to the United Nations, argued that
the sanctions exceeded the Security Council's mandate. "We believe
such practices to be illegitimate and dangerous," he said, calling the
resolution one more obvious "attempt to take the Council beyond its
charter prerogatives."

China echoed that argument but also expressed concern about whether
the sanctions would impede mediation efforts by South Africa.

"We feel that the important thing is for the political parties to get
together to discuss this issue seriously to sort out their
differences," the Chinese ambassador, Wang Guangya, said before
rejecting the resolution. "It will interfere with the negotiating
process and lead to the further deterioration of the situation."

In the end, nine Council members voted to support the measure: the
United States, Britain, France, Belgium, Italy, Panama, Costa Rica,
Croatia and Burkina Faso. The United States had initially been
confident in getting the resolution passed because it had the support
of Burkina Faso as well as other African states not on the Council,
like Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Burkina Faso's support was considered crucial. Besides the two vetoes,
the other votes against the sanctions were cast by Libya, Vietnam and
South Africa. Indonesia abstained.

Throughout the debate on the Zimbabwe elections, South Africa had led
much of the opposition, with its ambassador, Dumisani Kumalo, saying
that the Security Council should let Africa try to solve its own
problems. Mr. Kumalo said the resolution went too far in criticizing
only the ruling party in Zimbabwe, the ZANU-PF, while wholly
supporting Mr. Tsvangirai and his Movement for Democratic Change.

That made it an unbalanced basis for mediation, Mr. Kumalo said, and
on Friday he noted in his Security Council remarks that the talks
between the two sides, which had started in Pretoria, South Africa,
needed to be given some space without sanctions to succeed.

Critics have suggested Mr. Mbeki, the South African president, has
been overly indulgent toward Mr. Mugabe because both of them came from
liberation organizations and face increasingly vocal trade union
movements that want to replace them.

Mr. Khalilzad accused South Africa of protecting the "horrible regime
in Zimbabwe," calling it particularly disturbing given that sanctions
eventually undermined the apartheid government that had oppressed
South Africa.

The American ambassador disparaged the mediation effort and Mr.
Mbeki's position. "There isn't anything serious going on in terms of
negotiations ," Mr. Khalilzad said. "The South African effort,
President Mbeki's effort, so far has been a failure. President Mbeki's
actions appear to be protecting Mr. Mugabe, and to be working hand in
glove with him at times, while he, Mugabe, uses violent means to
fragment and weaken the opposition."

Mr. Kumalo said that while some pressure was necessary, the leap to
sanctions was too fast and they should be threatened before being
applied.

Mr. Khalilzad said the United States had been willing to consider
various options, including a longer timetable to apply sanctions, but
ultimately Security Council members opposed to the resolution decided
to reject it outright rather than negotiate.