'We want a clean partnership with Asian countries'

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe is one of the oldest and longest serving leaders taking part in the Asian-African Summit. This being his fifth visit to Indonesia, Mugabe used his time here to open Zimbabwe's embassy building in the Patra Kuningan district on Thursday. He also took the time to meet The Jakarta Post's Endy M. Bayuni and Veeramalla Anjaiah to talk about his expectations of the summit and how his Look East policy ties in with the New Asia-Africa Strategic Partnership. The following are excerpts from the interview:

What do you expect to come out of this summit, and how do you compare this with the 1955 Bandung conference?

After Bandung, a lot of things happened. We had the Non- Aligned Movement as a child of an initiative of the Afro-Asian solidarity, and we continued to work with the solidarity in getting countries in southern Africa, if not the whole of Africa, independent.

Now, 50 years later, the scene has changed completely. Countries that were not independent are now independent. Colonialism has died politically in many countries. So, most African countries now are in a position to effectively relate to Asian countries through this solidarity. This is also true of Asian countries. There is now greater room politically, economically, socially, culturally and technically to interact with each other.

Anything specific you would like to see in this summit?

The fact that we have new threats -- it is absolutely necessary now for the Afro-Asian movement to create a solidarity that would enable it to ward off acts of aggression that come out of the unilateralism that we see happening.

Our eyes today are drawn into the one country in the Middle East, which has been aggressed by Western forces of imperialism for no reason other than the fact that they want to bring that country under their control and its resources into their ownership. I am specifically referring to the unjustified attack on Iraq. What happened in Iraq could happen elsewhere.

What do you want this summit to do about such acts of aggression?

I have not come here to do the innocuous things like passing resolutions with no effect. We in Africa, my own country for example, are also being threatened by the new colonialism of Britain. What does this solidarity want to do with things of this nature?

I expect a solidarity that enables us to defend politically -- that enables us to have a world body, the United Nations, that can withstand these acts of aggression and the violations of the UN charter.

And we come here saying nothing about these things -- what are we doing?

What about the strategic partnership this summit is pushing for?

This is very important to us in Zimbabwe. We have developed this Look East policy because Asia is where people like us, people who have had the same history of colonialism -- people who have started developing their economies and are more advanced than us in Africa. Relations with them in the context of aspirations of solidarity will be reciprocally rewarded, and I think we should emphasize that aspect of economic cooperation, trading with each other.

Is such a partnership feasible?

Yes, extremely so. There must be a give-and-take exercise. You look at areas where you are agreed, and develop areas where there are differences, and you try to see how those differences can be allayed through negotiations, through constant interactions. You will always find a way through dialog. But there must be constant meetings, and we must practice some of our resolutions taking shape.

There seems to have been a big change in Zimbabwe's foreign policy away from the West?

The relations with Europe were not of our own making. We were occupied and it was by virtue of occupation that our economies found themselves being exploited for the benefit of the West. We have had Western multinational enterprises coming into our countries, creating a root, deepening themselves in our mining and agriculture sectors, and our land was being taken. In 1980, we had political independence but not economic independence. Many countries are not economically independent because they are being exploited by the West.

We are now acquiring our land, we are entering the mining and other sectors and this ensures that there is empowerment of our people. If we realize this, it is absolutely necessary for us to interact with other countries, including the West.

We want partnership based on equity, equality, and reciprocity, and not of the colonial type where we become mere workers. Now we operate and own these enterprises. We want to have a clean partnership, not the dirty ones we have at the moment.

We feel also that during the period we were fighting for our liberation, support came from the East, from China; there was a lot of political and diplomatic support from the United Nations, India and other countries.

Countries like Asia, including Indonesia, were also under colonialism once upon a time. They got free and independent much earlier than us, therefore they have had a longer period of independence during which they have improved themselves. So you have the so-called Eastern Tigers now, they won't bite us and they will accommodate us I am sure.