A Chinese ship carrying armaments made by a Chinese state-owned company and bound for Zimbabwe has headed back to China without unloading its cargo of bullets and mortar bombs, a spokeswoman for China’s foreign ministry confirmed at a briefing Thursday.
“The Chinese company has already decided to send the military goods back to China in the same vessel, the An Yue Jiang,” the spokeswoman, Jiang Yu, said.
The arms shipment has been a particularly contentious issue in Africa and abroad because of widespread concerns about politically-motivated violence in the wake of disputed elections in Zimbabwe last month.
[...] China’s decision to turn the ship around was welcomed by the dock workers, trade unionists, religious leaders, Western diplomats and human rights workers who have been campaigning since last week to block delivery of the weapons to Zimbabwe.
They had said the weaponry could be used to carry out an even more violent crackdown on Zimbabwe’s political opposition, which is allied with the country’s unionized workers.
[...] The ship had sailed into Durban harbor in South Africa last week. The South African government had already issued a permit to allow the arms to be trucked across South Africa to landlocked Zimbabwe when dock workers declared they would not unload the weapons and an Anglican archbishop persuaded a judge to bar the arms delivery across South African soil temporarily.
The campaign has since pressed other countries in the region to reject the shipment, a call that had gained important backing from Zambia’s president, Levy Mwanawasa, who heads a bloc of 14 southern African nations.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain said in Parliament on Wednesday that he would “promote proposals for an embargo on all arms to Zimbabwe,” without giving further details.
But on Thursday, Jacob G. Zuma — the leader of South Africa’s governing party, the African National Congress, and potentially a future president of South Africa, the region’s most powerful country — said in London that he did not support the British leader’s call for a full-fledged arms embargo, and ruled out military intervention by South Africa in Zimbabwe to solve the political crisis.
“I don’t think we have reached the stage of an arms embargo in Zimbabwe,” he said at a news conference in London, where he held talks with Mr. Brown on Wednesday.
South African participation would be critical in any arms embargo against the Mugabe dictatorship. here's hoping that the government of South Africa decides to do the right thing, and support an arms embargo once it is proposed.
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