The two main parties in Zimbabwe's fractious national unity government - President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change - were trading barbs on Tuesday ahead of a meeting on healing and reconciliation called by the government body undertaking that task.
The ZANU-PF Politburo and the national executives of both MDC wings - the other is led by Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara- will meet with the Organ on National Healing in a bid to speed the process.
But ZANU-PF Secretary for Administration Didymus Mutasa, a minister of state for security affairs in Mr. Mugabe's office, was quoted Tuesday in the state-controlled Herald newspaper as accusing the Tsvangirai MDC wing of training party members in Victoria Falls and, he added, “we wonder for what purposes.”
Sources said the healing meeting is sponsored by the United Nations Development Program among other donors. Minister of State for Healing and Reconciliation Sekai Holland said the session was historic.
ZANU-PF party spokesman Rugare Gumbo said he had not been briefed yet about the meeting and referred all questions to Mutasa, who was not available for comment on the remarks attributed to him.
Tsvangirai MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa said charges his party is conducting training are totally false.
Spokesman Edwin Mushoriwa of the Mutambara MDC said he hopes the meeting will be fruitful.
