THE United Kingdom is seeking to pursue mutually beneficial dialogue with Zimbabwe in a development meant to mend relations between the two nations.
This came out when British Ambassador to Zimbabwe, His Excellency, Pete Vowles paid a courtesy call on the Minister of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services, Dr Jenfan Muswere in Harare this Friday.
The meeting saw the two sharing notes on the possible areas of cooperation.
“The discussions were based on how best we can work together as respective countries, how we can cooperate, collaborate and exchange information how best we can improve our trade volumes and also how best we could work together and improve our tourism and the mining industry and all sectors of our economy.
“We also discussed how best we can work together to share experiences and how we can share technical information in terms of creating a robust media industry and also how best we can work together in terms of human capital development for our respective countries in order to create good favourable balance of trade in terms of trade.
“Under the new leadership of President Mnangagwa we believe that we can re-engage and engage any country that we are friend to all and enemy to none. So this courtesy visit by the ambassador is part of the re-engagement and engagement strategy but also at the same time to find ways because there is a political will for us to be able to work together,” ,” said Dr Muswere.
Ambassador Vowles added that the focus now is on building a strong relationship based on mutual respect.
“We talked about the turn of our conversation particularly the fact that we have a difficult past between the two countries but also very strong relationship over the years and that my predecessor and I are both trying to form a relationship with Zimbabwe where we can have mutual respect and sovereignty and also where we are able to have the conversation in private between our two countries that we can work through challenges together as partners should.
“As the President said to me when i presented my credentials, in the President’s words we spent the last 20 years shouting at each other and that has not served either country i think the key thing here is trying to form a relationship with mutual respect we are trying to do it in a respectful way together.
For government, the development is an indication of the success of the engagement and re-engagement thrust being pursued by the second republic,” he said.
Relations between the UK and Zimbabwe have greatly improved under President Mnangagwa’s administration after decades of animosity necessitated by the West’move to punish Zimbabwe for implementing the land reform programme at the turn of the millennium.
Source ZBC news
