State department spokesman on Mugabe's tiff with Johnnie Carson

QUESTION: Do you now have full details about the exchange between Mr. Carson and President Mugabe?

MR. KELLY: I don’t know about full details, but I do have some follow-up that I can give you. What they – that – Assistant Secretary Carson and President Mugabe had a meeting. This was on the margins of the African Union summit. It was a bilateral meeting.

Assistant Secretary Carson stressed our desire to see the Zimbabwe Global Political Agreement – what we call the GPA – fully implemented. And he did express our concern about continued problems with respect for – to human rights and the rule of law in Zimbabwe.Yeah.

QUESTION: Can I --

MR. KELLY: That’s it.

QUESTION: You know, Ian, considering that Mugabe came out after this and said that Johnnie Carson was an idiot and a number of other things, that’s an awfully bland description of this meeting. Was he at all forceful in expressing his concerns about – your concerns about the human rights situation?

MR. KELLY: I don’t like that word “bland,” but I know Johnnie Carson and he is not bland.

QUESTION: The language that --

MR. KELLY: But I’m not prepared --

QUESTION: -- this building has used in the past for the last decade or so about Mugabe has not been – has been – sometimes it’s actually been colorful.

MR. KELLY: Well, yes --

QUESTION: To say that he only – he just expressed our concerns about the human rights situation doesn't really seem to do justice or it doesn't seem that it would have provoked the kind of response that President Mugabe gave.

MR. KELLY: Well, you know, as I said the other day, Johnnie Carson is one of our best diplomats. I know he has very strong feelings about the development of democracy in Zimbabwe. But beyond that, I’m not going to add any adverbs to what I said beyond the fact that I know that Johnnie Carson is a very strong and committed advocate for U.S. policy.

QUESTION: Can I just follow up?

MR. KELLY: Yeah.

QUESTION: Out of this exchange between Mr. Carson and Mr. Mugabe, do you still see Mr. Mugabe as a partner to, you know, implement this global agreement with Mr. Tsvangirai?

MR. KELLY: Well, I think what we’re focused on is getting this Global Political Agreement fully implemented. You know that the Secretary and the President, of course, met with Mr. Tsvangirai – I probably mispronounced that name – but the prime minister. And so we’re looking forward to getting that CPA agreement implemented.

QUESTION: But do you think Mugabe can be a partner in doing that presently?

MR. KELLY: As I say, we’re looking forward to seeing that agreement fully implemented.

Yeah.

QUESTION: Are they making progress?

MR. KELLY: I can’t answer that question right now.

ends 

A US Embassy spokesman said Ambassador McGee did not bid farewell to President Mugabe before leaving Zimbabwe because the U.S. Embassy's request for a courtesy call with President Mugabe was not responded to by Zimbabwe Foreign Affairs.

Ambassador McGee will still be working for the State Department at the National Defense University in Washington, DC and is leaving Zimbabwe having redefined the limits of diplomacy.

The climax of his time in Zimbabwe was when he led convoys of diplomats to see for themselves the violence that was being meted out to the opposition supporters in the run-up to last year's election.

The incident sparked off a diplomatic furore with the government, leading to the shooting of tyres on Ambassador  McGee's diplomatic vehicle, with Police saying he had violated the law by not giving notice of his planned trip outside Harare.

But the images of the victims of violence had already been flashed around the world and the violence remains well-documented.

Ambassador McGee ignored threats by Mugabe to send him packing back to Washington and carried on with his criticism of the Mugabe regime. He was, however, never heard to criticise the SADC which has consistently failed to reign in Mugabe.

He used a 4^th of July commemorations in Harare to bid farewell to Zimbabweans in a speech in which he acknowledged that the inclusive government was working on recovery, but added that there remained much to be done, not least on the rule of law and human rights.

“For real change to take hold in Zimbabwe, average Zimbabweans must do what the founders of the United States did 233 years ago. They must stand up for their rights and demand a government of their choosing that serves their interests.

“If they do so, I promise that the United States will support them in their quest,” said the diplomat. (See full remarks here)

President Obama has announced his intention to nominate Charles A. Ray, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, to replace Mr McGee.

President Mugabe met their boss, Mr Carson on the sidelines of the African Union summit in Libya last week, 11 years after Mr Carson left Zimbabwe where he was ambassador between 1995-97. It was also Mugabe's first high level contact with a United States government official in almost a decade.

The Herald deputy editor who accompanied Mugabe to the AU Summit, Ceaser Zvayi, wrote of the meeting, that Mugabe had told Mr Carson that the Inclusive Government was working very well and that he had agreed with MDC President Morgan Tsvangirai that they did not need any outsiders.

If Mugabe said that, then it was inaccurate, since Tsvangirai has already called in SADC to try and resolve outstanding issues which are threatening the unity government, and urged the AU and the international community to put pressure on Mr Mugabe to stop resisting change.

What ever the truth is about what transpired in Mugabe's meeting with  Mr Carson last week, the same editor now tells us, it left Mugabe fuming over Mr Carson's “condescending attitude”.

“You wouldn’t speak to an idiot of that nature,” said President Mugabe adding that he was “very angry with him because he thinks he can dictate to us what to do and what not to do in the inclusive government.”

‘‘We have the whole of SADC working with us, and you have the likes of little fellows like Carson, you see, wanting to say: ‘You do this, you do that.’ Who is he?

“I hope he was not speaking for Obama. I told him he was a shame, a great shame, being an African-American, an Afro-American for that matter.’’

President Mugabe was obviously told what he did not want to hear, that sanctions are not going to be lifted on him nor on his cohorts and Zimbabwe was not going to receive any balance of payments support if he did not allow democracy to prevail.

But he is apparently still confident that SADC is not going entertain Prime Minister Tsvangirai's complaint about aspects of the Global Political Agreement which Mugabe is refusing to implement, security forces reform, media reform, appointments of senior civil servants and a people-centred constitution.

Mugabe and his fellow AU leaders went against the tide of history at their summit in Libya where they agreed not to to co-operate with the International Criminal Court in executing the warrant of arrest on “The Butcher of Khartoum“, Bashir.