TEHRAN Southern African heads of state wound up a two-day summit in Windhoek Monday after deciding to set up a vast free trade zone and expressing support for embattled Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe. According to an AFP report, The leaders of the 14-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC), in a statement, expressed their support for Mugabe and slammed threatened U.S. sanctions as punitive and unjust.
The SADC heads declared that Britain should "honor its obligations" and provide resources for land reform in Zimbabwe. "We welcome the assurance given by the president of Zimbabwe that the land reform program would be handled peacefully, and within the laws of the government of Zimbabwe," it said. The statement declared that parliamentary elections in Zimbabwe in June "were held in a transparent, peaceful, free and fair environment". In the United States, the Zimbabwe 2000 Democracy Bill, passed by the Senate in June and due to be considered by the House of Representatives, would bar aid and debt relief and instruct U.S. executive directors of multinational lending institutions to oppose credits to Zimbabwe.
The SADC leaders also agreed on the setting up, from September 1, of a vast free trade zone, aimed at the eventual unification of a market of 200 million people.
Initial participants will be South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. Zambia is expected to join soon. The pact envisages that 85 percent of trade will be liberalized by 2008, while the remaining 15 percent will be tariff-free by 2012.