Presenter:  He spent years condemning his Western critics and now it seems he’s changing his tune.  The President of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, has called for a fresh start to relations with the countries he’d previously seen as hostile.

Speaking at the first sitting of Parliament since he entered in to a Unity Government with the former Opposition Movement for Democratic Change, Mr Mugabe talked about the need for co-operation rather than confrontation and called for the lifting of international sanctions.

So is a normalisation of relations with the West on the cards?  I asked Britain’s Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Mark Canning.

Mark Canning (British Ambassador to Zimbabwe):  The Unity Government has now been in place for eight months.  We’ve seen significant progress on the economic front.  We’ve seen the economy stabilised.  Goods are in the shops; schools and hospitals are open and there’s been a marked turnaround after the chaos of 2008.  There’s been less progress on the political track.  

We’ve seen some tentative moves towards constitutional reform and the formation of the various bodies which are provided for in the, the agreement that set up the Government. But there’s more to be done.  We’re still seeing incidents of land seizures and we still need to see substantive progress on some of the really tough political issues.  And that of course is what will guide our engagement in the future.

Presenter:  Are you seeing enough there to perhaps start thinking about lifting sanctions?

MC:  Well the measures we’ve got in place against Zimbabwe are targeted on a very narrow clique of individuals, in fact two hundred and three people.  So they are not by any stretch of the imagination what you could term economic sanctions.  But those measures, which of course are EU measures, not exclusively UK ones, will certainly be kept under review and will be looked at in the light of what we are seeing happening on the ground.

Presenter:  You have to walk a difficult line.  On the one, on the one side taking what can be considered quite a, quite a hard approach vis a vis Mr Mugabe and his supporters.  On the other hand trying to make sure that you don’t make life too difficult for, for the MDC.

MC:  Absolutely, but we’re not hanging back.  We regard the formation of the Unity Government as a very important development, a very promising development.  We are providing already substantial assistance.  We’re putting around one hundred million dollars in to Zimbabwe this year.  That money is helping to get the hospitals working, the schools open.  

So we want this to work, but the extent to which we are going to commit further will of course be dictated by what we’re seeing happening on the ground.  But it’s not a case, as I say, of hanging back.  We’re giving it very substantial backing.

Presenter:  When you hear President Mugabe talking about being willing to start afresh, mend relations and so forth can you take statements like that at face value?

MC:  Well it’s very welcome to hear that of course, but as I say one needs to take a hard look at what’s actually happening.  We’ve seen some very significant progress economically, we’ve seen less on the political track.  So far so good and we’ll see where the future goes.

Presenter:  Britain’s Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Mark Canning, there.

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