Zimbabwe Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Shailesh Vara
Main Page: Shailesh Vara (Conservative - North West Cambridgeshire)Department Debates - View all Shailesh Vara's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
(7 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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Boris Johnson
The timetable has been well spelled out by my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend East (James Duddridge). We need to go forward now with the ZANU-PF conference and then the elections scheduled for next year. It is crucial that they should now go ahead and be free and fair. At this stage, it would not be right for us to speculate about personalities; what matters is that the people of Zimbabwe have a free and democratic choice.
Mr Shailesh Vara (North West Cambridgeshire) (Con)
I appreciate that events are very fast-moving, but will the British Government work closely with the African Union to try to get it to put pressure on Zimbabwe, both not to continue as an authoritarian state and to respect human rights, particularly of those from overseas, such as from Britain?
Boris Johnson
I thank my hon. Friend for that excellent point. The AU is an increasingly important and valuable interlocutor in Africa, and I have a good relationship with Mr Faki, president of the commission. I will be going to the AU summit in Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire next week, and I have no doubt that Zimbabwe will be top of the AU agenda in Côte d’Ivoire.