Mugabe threatens to leave the Commonwealth

Behind-the-scenes efforts to prevent the vexed question of Zimbabwe from dividing next weekend's Commonwealth summit in Nigeria appeared to have come to naught yesterday, after President Robert Mugabe threatened to take his country out of the Commonwealth rather than accept the terms for readmission.

Mr Mugabe said: "If our sovereignty is what we have to lose to be readmitted into the Commonwealth, well we will say goodbye to the Commonwealth, and perhaps the time has now come to say so."

Zimbabwe was suspended from the Commonwealth's councils last year, after Mr Mugabe was re-elected President in elections that were judged by international observers to have been rigged. It was not, however, expelled; instead, the secretary general set five benchmarks which Zimbabwe would have to meet if it wanted readmission to full membership. These include the need for renewed political dialogue inside Zimbabwe, the repeal of laws that restrict freedom of assembly and expression, and the restructuring of the electoral process to provide for genuinely fair elections.

Mr Mugabe's defiant statement, delivered just as delegates to a pre-summit business conference convened in the summit venue, Abuja, seemed calculated to force the Zimbabwe issue on to the summit agenda, despite the best efforts of the host nation, Britain and other member states to keep it in the background. With the fiercest criticism of Zimbabwe coming from the "white" Commonwealth member states and many of the "black" member states sympathising with Mr Mugabe's view that Britain, as the former colonial power, is largely to blame for Zimbabwe's problems, the issue is a divisive embarrassment that some see as a threat to the very survival of the Commonwealth.

Mr Mugabe stayed away from the last Commonwealth summit, in Australia, which coincided with the climax of his re-election campaign. This year, Mr Mugabe appeared intent on coming until a late stage. It took a semi-public threat from the British Government not to attend and some strong-arming from the Nigerian President, Olusegun Obasanjo, to persuade Mr Mugabe not to appear. In fact, he was not invited ­ a decision that British officials say rested with Nigeria, as the host ­ but the mere lack of an invitation was not considered sufficient to deter him.

A clear change of tactics by Britain, Australia and some other countries in the months before this year's summit was evidence of just how much of a potential embarrassment Mr Mugabe could be. While Britain and Australia had been forthright in their condemnation of Mr Mugabe in the run-up to last year's decision to suspend Zimbabwe's membership, they had been less vocal recently ­ in the apparent hope that the summit would not be overshadowed by the issue.

British officials appeared uncertain how seriously to take Mr Mugabe's threat to take Zimbabwe out of the Commonwealth altogether. One view was that he was simply playing to domestic opinion; another that it was a sign of his desperation.

Even without the question of Zimbabwe, the summit in Abuja was already confronting the prospect of new black-white divisions, with the secretary general, Don McKinnon, of New Zealand, facing a late and unexpected challenge to his re-election from the former Sri Lankan foreign minister Lakshman Kadirgamar. Mr McKinnon had expected to be reappointed unopposed to a second four-year term. New Zealand sources expressed surprise at the late challenge.