THE solution to the crisis in the Great Lakes area of central Africa must be an African one, according to the President of Zimbabwe, Mr Robert Mugabe.
Speaking to The Irish Times yesterday on the second day of his Irish visit, he outlined the initiatives being taken though the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). A number of meetings of heads of government from the Great Lakes region, along with Mr Mugabe and President Mandela of South Africa, will take place before the end of this month.
While the solution would have to come from Africa, the conflict in Rwanda, Burundi and eastern Zaire was also an international problem. The United Nations must become involved in implementing any solution, he said.
Later, at a lunch for Mr Mugabe, the Taoiseach, Mr Bruton, spoke of how appalling it was that the conflicts in the area had developed into war in eastern Zaire.
Mr Bruton agreed with Mr Mugabe that the solution must come from within Africa and warned against the tendency within Europe to want to "do something" and consequently "derail" the package worked out by those closer to the problem. Mr Bruton said the conflict in Zaire was a test of the new institutions of the OAU.
Mr Mugabe met the President, Mrs Robinson, at Aras an Uachtarain yesterday and had talks with Mr Bruton at Government Buildings. Mr Mugabe said they discussed bilateral issues, including aid and trade. The two men also discussed the regional conflict in the Great Lakes region.
Following the talks Mr Mugabe attended the lunch at Iveagh House, which was hosted by Mr and Mrs Bruton. He spoke warmly of the links between Ireland and Zimbabwe, of his previous visits and his long contacts with Irish priests and nuns.
He spoke of his own schooling at Kutama, where a Father Jerome O'Hea SJ was both the school principal and a medical doctor. Father O'Hen ran a strict school and the President spoke of being "sjamboeked", or hit with a flexible rod, for leaving school without permission. "That is what made us, Irish discipline," he said.
Many years Inter, after the war of liberation, Mr Mugabe and other old boys sought international aid and rebuilt the school and the hospital and named them after Father O'Hea.
Among those at yesterday's lunch were the Minister for Justice, Mrs Owen; a former; Taoiseach, Dr Garret FitzGerald; the Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Ms Joan Burton; the Minister of State at the Department of the Tanaiste, Ms Eithne Fitzgerald; the Garda Commissioner, Mr Pat Byrne; the Army Chief of Staff, Lt Gen Gerard McMahon; the president of UCD, Dr Art Cosgrove; the provost of Trinity College, Dublin, Dr Thomas Mitchell; the chairman of The Irish Times Ltd, Major T.B. McDowell; and the editor of The Irish Times, Mr Conor Brady.
The menu consisted of smoked chicken and basil soup, roast sirloin of veal with whiskey and wholegrain mustard sauce, and exotic fruit.