ZIMBABWE - HARARE - MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai has been invited to US President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration next Tuesday, top MDC source has said.

 

The US President-elect's inauguration next week will be a landmark event in world history, but Robert Matibili Mugabe's cohorts have not been invited.

 

 

Infact incoming Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton said at the Senate hearing Monday that the Obama administration was determined to "end the autocracy in Zimbabwe."

 

 

 

It’s a pointer of the Obama administration's foreign policy towards the Matibili administration, which it has slammed as a dictatorship.

 

The US has said it will not support any regime with Matibili at the helm.

While the State Department last week informed all foreign embassies in Washington that, in keeping with past practice, their ambassadors and spouses can come to the event to represent their countries, officials from their capitals, however, must stay home.

Our source said Tsvangirai has been invited as head of party not head of government - a position he is set to assume if the September 15 power-sharing deal flies.

"These invitations are only for the chiefs of diplomatic missions and their spouses and are not transferable," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wrote in a diplomatic note sent to the embassies on Jan. 6.

An earlier note, sent by Rice to the embassies on Nov. 24, says the exclusion of foreign leaders and top government officials is customary for US presidential inaugurations.

"As in the past, foreign delegations will not be invited to Washington for this occasion," it said.

But Matibili , banned from the US in 2001 would have relished that one opportunity to strut on the world stage. It will remain a pipe dream.

 

There is nothing stopping Tsvangirai after receiving his passport on Christmas Day.

Our MDC source however said it was highly unlikely that Tsvangirai would attend Obama's inauguration given that he is returning home possibly tomorrow to conclude talks on the formation of a new government.

 

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Infact on Tuesday, as Obama would be sworn in, Zimbabwe's Parliament will be sitting to consider legislation giving legal and constitutional effect to the new all-inclusive government.

But the MDC says it will block the legislation if outstanding issues involving equity in power-sharing is not resolved.

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