Zimbabwe's Secretary for Information and Publicity George Charamba has accused the trio composed of former UN chief Kofi Annan, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter and Graca Machel, the wife of Nelson Mandela, of facilitating regime change in Zimbabwe.
Charamba said the "Elders" should not pretend to have Zimbabweans at heart when, in fact, they were fronting a regime change agenda being pushed by Britain and the United States, The Herald newspaper reported on Tuesday.
"Annan has been in South Africa several times, Graca lives in South Africa and are beginning now to find a Methodist church where Zimbabwean refugees live. People should not seek to make big names for themselves using Zimbabwe," he was quoted as saying.
"Annan has on no occasion denounced the illegal Western sanctions against Zimbabwe despite repeated appeals by the Zimbabwean President. Annan refused to his last day in office (as UN secretary-general) to denounce the sanctions, but now pretends to be concerned about a humanitarian crisis he knows can be traced to sanctions he condoned as UN secretary-general. These (Elders) are glory seekers and we treat them as such," he added.
Charamba also dismissed the notion that Carter supported Zimbabwe's liberation struggle, an argument being pushed to give credence to his involvement with the "Elders" group in Zimbabwe, according to the report.
"Carter never supported the Patriotic Front, no American president could ever do that. What Carter did ― and we commend him for that ― was to realize that the white settler community, which the United States supported, was about to be overrun by the Patriotic Front forces and what was needed was a rescue package for the embattled white community. That is why the US stepped in to save the Lancaster House deal by offering funds to support land reform in Zimbabwe," he said.
The United States never supported the sanctions against the Rhodesian settler regime and the Carter administration defended Rhodesia by ensuring the exclusion of chrome from the sanctions so the United States could continue accessing the chrome, said Charamba.
Source: Xinhua
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