No mediation without Nyusi-Dhlakama meeting – Frelimo

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No mediation without Nyusi-Dhlakama meeting – Frelimo

7:51 CAT | 10 May 2016

In File Club of Mozambique

The parliamentary group of Mozambique’s ruling Frelimo Party on Thursday insisted that there must be a face to face meeting between President Filipe Nyusi, and the leader of the Renamo rebels, Afonso Dhlakama, before any possible international mediation in the conflict.

This position was taken by the head of the Frelimo group, Margarida Talapa, speaking to reporters shortly after a visit by Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa to the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic.

“We don’t have any problem”, she said. “What we want is that he (Dhlakama) sits down with President Nyusi and discusses national problems, before taking them outside the county. The problems of the country should first be discussed by Mozambicans”.

She accused Renamo of taking advantage of the various meetings it had held with foreign politicians to allege that the government is not interested in dialogue.

“We are available at any moment”, stressed Talapa, “but for a dialogue without any pre-conditions”.

For her part, the head of the Renamo parliamentary group, Ivone Soares, said that friendly countries should not wait for an invitation before coming to Mozambique to help overcoming what she described as the current impasse.

She dismissed any possibility of a meeting between Dhlakama and Rebelo de Sousa. Indeed, such a meeting seems out of the question, since Dhlakama is refusing to come to Maputo and there seems no time in Rebelo de Sousa’s schedule for the Portuguese President to visit Dhlakama’s bush hideout in Gorongosa district.

Soares did not budge from the Renamo position that mediation comes before dialogue. She insisted that any understanding between the government and Renamo must be based on an acceptance of international mediation.

“We have already suggested that the European Union, South Africa President Jacob Zuma and the Catholic Church should be among the mediators”, she said. “So far Frelimo has not replied to this request. Under these conditions we cannot talk of a dialogue at the highest level (i.e. between Nyusi and Dhlakama)”.

Source: AIM