Friendship with Mozambique may be damaged if Portugal helps only one side, Renamo warns

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Friendship with Mozambique may be damaged if Portugal helps only one side, Renamo warns

12:33 CAT | 05 Oct 2016

Lusa (File photo) / Ivone Soares

Ivone Soares, parliamentary leader of Mozambique’s main opposition party, warned on Friday that friendship with Portugal would suffer if Lisbon helped only the ruling party,

In a written response to questions from Lusa on the subject during her visit to Portugal, which ended on September 30, Soares said she wanted Portugal to know that Mozambique “needs the help of Portugal and the Portuguese,” including the Portuguese in Mozambique and the Mozambicans in Portugal, but that partisan involvement would have “unpredictable results”.

“Relations among peoples and between states are too intertwined and developed for us to leave them aside in solutions to the problems we have,” she wrote. However, she recalled that the crisis in Mozambique “is a conflict between brothers”, and that Portugal could help, “but carefully, and impartially”.

“When it becomes apparent that a friend comes to the aid of only one of the brothers, to the detriment of the other, friendship is damaged. The results are unpredictable,” she warned.

Expressing confidence that “the state and Portuguese citizens in good faith” will know how to help find solutions to the conflict “with a mind open to the reasoning on both sides”, Soares warned that: “It is not good to hear our friends ask us why we attack civilians. This is a sign that they are against us.”

“The Portuguese, and Portuguese politicians in particular, should try to understand more deeply the reasons for the conflict and convey their experiences and their knowledge so that Mozambicans find mutual trust and peace.”

In Lisbon, Soares met with the leaders of the CDS-PP (Social Democratic), PS (Socialist and PSD (Social Democrat) political parties, saying she received messages of “solidarity and thirst for information about what is happening in Mozambique, beyond what the official media says”. She participated in the Forum on Economic Justice, at the invitation of Casa de Moçambique and was received by the Mozambican ambassador to Portugal, among others dignitaries.

“One of the aims of this visit is to present Renamo’s vision of the political, economic and social situation in Mozambique, in the context of the internal conflict,” she said.

Mozambique has been experiencing political and military crisis since the general election of 2014, where Renamo refuses to recognize Frelimo victory.

Since the beginning of August, international mediation has focused on the need for Renamo governance, an immediate cessation of fighting, the separation of party and the defense and security forces, including police and the intelligence services, and the disarmament of the armed wing of the main opposition party and their reintegration into civilian life.

The country’s central region has been the scene of clashes between the armed wing of the main opposition party and the defence and security forces and mutual allegations of abductions and assassinations of political leaders of both parties.

Source: Lusa