Further proof (not that it was needed) that some of us were born into a world about a thousand years too early.http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20080711/ ... a8d4f.html
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Russia and China vetoed on Friday a Western-backed U.N. Security Council resolution to impose sanctions on Zimbabwe for holding a violent presidential poll that was boycotted by the opposition candidate.
(Advertisement)
The resolution would have imposed an arms embargo on the southern African country and financial and travel restrictions on President Robert Mugabe and 13 other officials. It would also have called for a U.N. special envoy for Zimbabwe to be appointed.
Nine countries voted for the U.S.-drafted resolution, five -- including veto-holding Russia and China -- opposed it and one abstained in the 15-nation council.
The result represented a failure by the Western bloc to induce Russia and China at least to abstain because of the gravity of the crisis in Zimbabwe. It also sparked angry exchanges between the big powers.
U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad accused Russia of a "U-turn" from its position at a Group of Eight summit in Japan earlier this week, when Moscow joined a statement backing sanctions against Mugabe's government.
Russia's performance on Zimbabwe "raises doubts about its reliability as a G8 partner," Khalilzad said.
Opponents of the resolution, which also included South Africa, Libya and Vietnam, argued that Zimbabwe was not a threat to international peace and security worthy of a council resolution. They said talks in South Africa between Zimbabwe's ruling and opposition parties should be given a chance.
But British Ambassador John Sawers told the council it had "failed to shoulder its responsibility to do what it can to prevent a national tragedy deepening and spreading its effects across southern Africa."
He called the Russian and Chinese decisions "deeply damaging to the long-term interests of Zimbabwe's people ... (and to) prospects for bringing to an early end the violence and the oppression in Zimbabwe."
Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin responded that the resolution was "an ever more obvious attempt to take the council beyond its charter prerogatives and beyond maintaining international peace and security. We believe such practices to be illegitimate and dangerous."
Zimbabwean Ambassador Boniface Chidyausiku told reporters after the vote that the Security Council had refused to be "intimidated" by Britain and the United States. "The United Nations has stuck to the Charter," he said.
Voting for the resolution were the United States, Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, Croatia, Burkina Faso, Panama and Costa Rica. Indonesia abstained.
FRESH VIOLENCE
In Zimbabwe, the opposition on Friday accused government security forces of murdering a polling agent in fresh political violence that could undermine the talks in South Africa.
Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew from a June 27 presidential run-off poll, citing attacks on his supporters by pro-Mugabe militia. The MDC and Western powers branded Mugabe's landslide re-election a sham.
Tsvangirai's MDC and a smaller faction led by Arthur Mutambara began preliminary discussions on Thursday with officials from Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF under the auspices of South African mediators in Pretoria, the South African capital.
"Yes, the talks are continuing," a diplomatic source close to the talks told Reuters on Friday. Tsvangirai's MDC has played down the importance of the talks.
"There hasn't been any dialogue as far as we are concerned, but what I can confirm, though, is that we have had consultative contacts with a view to outlining the broad parameters, the framework of the negotiation ...," MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa said.
A total of 113 MDC activists have been killed in election-related violence since the first round of elections in late March, the party said in a statement announcing the death of one of its officials, Gift Mutsvungunu.
His decomposing body was found in a Harare suburb on Thursday, with eyes gouged out and a severely burned backside, it said. "There is reasonable suspicion that state security agents killed him."
Tsvangirai defeated Mugabe in a March 29 presidential election but failed to win the absolute majority needed to avoid a second ballot. The MDC leader has refused to negotiate a power-sharing deal until the government halts the bloodshed.
Once prosperous Zimbabwe suffers the world's worst inflation rate, estimated to be at least 2 million percent, and millions of its people have fled to neighboring countries in search of food and work.
(Additional reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe in Harare, Muchena Zigomo in Pretoria and Ellen Wulfhorst at the United Nations; Editing by )
Fucking idiotic Russians and chinese. (not really news).
