LONDON — Prime Minister Gordon Brown's decision to boycott the EU-African Summit held recently in Lisbon won general approval in Britain. He did not attend because Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe, was going to be at the meeting.
Mugabe has devastated the economy of a potentially rich country, lining his own pockets and those of his henchmen. Rampant inflation has destroyed the livelihood of a large part of the population struggling to survive. He has flouted human rights, and his opponents have been imprisoned and beaten up.
The European Union has condemned his regime and applied weak sanctions including travel bans, but the African States let it be known that if Mugabe was denied entry to Portugal for the conference, other African leaders would not attend. The Portuguese, who hold the EU presidency through yearend, regarded the conference as a prestige achievement, so they gave in to African blackmail and the conference went ahead.