PRETORIA, South Africa - The U.S. can no longer support a proposed Zimbabwean power-sharing deal that would leave Robert Mugabe, "a man who's lost it," as president, the top U.S. envoy for Africa told reporters Sunday.
Jendayi Frazer, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs, made the announcement in South Africa after spending the last several days explaining the U.S. shift to regional leaders. The new U.S. stance will put pressure on Zimbabwe's neighbours -- South Africa in particular -- to abandon Mugabe. But South Africa said its position was unchanged.
The U.S., Frazer said, has become convinced Mugabe is incapable of sharing power.
She cited political moves he has made since September without consulting the opposition, reports his regime has continued to harass and arrest opposition and human rights activists, and the continued deterioration of Zimbabwe's humanitarian and economic situation.
Particularly worrying, she said, was the rapid spread of cholera, an easily treatable and preventable disease that has killed at least 1,000 Zimbabweans since August.
Frazer cited accusations from the Mugabe regime that the West waged biological warfare to deliberately start the cholera epidemic as an indication Mugabe is "a man who's lost it, who's losing his mind, who's out of touch with reality."
If Mugabe's neighbours were to unite and "go to Mugabe and tell him to go, I do think he would go," she said.
Secretary State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday on the American TV program "Meet the Press" that Zimbabwe was discussed at the United Nations last week.
"This is another circumstance in which the international community, most of it -- including, by the way, several African states: Botswana, the leadership of Kenya and others -- are saying that the regime of Robert Mugabe has got to go," Rice said.
"You have a cholera epidemic there. You have a humanitarian disaster in terms of food. You have the goons of the Mugabe regime going around and detaining people and frightening people, terrorizing people. Again, the international community in that circumstance needs to act."
But South Africa said Sunday the agreement under which Mugabe would remain president and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai would take a new prime minister's post was the only way forward.
South Africa is the region's diplomatic leader. Its former president, Thabo Mbeki, mediated Zimbabwe's power-sharing agreement in September and has worked since then to break an impasse between Mugabe and the Zimbabwean opposition over how to divide cabinet posts.
When the power-sharing agreement was announced, the U.S. gave crucial support, offering to lift sanctions and help Zimbabwe re-negotiate relations with international lenders if the deal were implemented.
"We're not prepared to do any of that now," Frazer said Sunday.
Asked later whether that robbed Zimbabwe's neighbours of important leverage, Thabo Masebe, spokesman for South African president Kgalema Motlanthe, said only: "Our position has not changed."
Tendai Biti, chief negotiator for Zimbabwean opposition leader Tsvangirai, said the opposition remained committed to the stalled talks aimed at forming a power-sharing government with Mugabe and Tsvangirai. But Biti noted that Tsvangirai said Friday that he will ask his party to halt the power-sharing negotiations unless political detainees are released or charged by Jan. 1.
Biti said the U.S. position was difficult to contest, saying that in Mugabe, "you are dealing with someone ... that cannot be trusted."
South Africa's Motlanthe had said as recently as last week that he believed the unity proposal was the solution, because it was what Zimbabwean negotiators wanted. Frazer said the U.S. also believed a unity government could move Zimbabwe forward, but "it's not credible with Mugabe as president."
