johannesburg, south africa -- Zimbabwe's ruling party agreed Tuesday to modest democratic reforms ahead of national elections, including slashing the presidential term by a year, ending presidential appointment of legislators, and expanding the lower house of parliament.
The reform package, however, left President Robert Mugabe's sweeping powers intact and failed to address the southern African nation's flawed electoral rolls, less than six months before national elections are to be held.
Although some analysts hailed the accord between the ruling ZANU-PF party and two factions of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change as an important step toward strengthening democracy in Zimbabwe, others viewed it as a cynical concession by a ruling party that is confident it can beat a fractured opposition in March elections.
The deal also was seen as a bid by Mugabe's regime to win greater credibility for its electoral procedures as it seeks a regional rescue package for its collapsing economy.
"It's a very major development in terms of African solutions for African problems," government spokesman George Charamba said in a telephone interview. "It puts paid to all these claims made, especially by the Western media, that the negotiations between ZANU-PF and the MDC are going nowhere. . . . Now that there is this working relationship between the two parties, it is interesting to see how this whole argument justifying sanctions will go. I'd really like to see how they would justify that."
The agreement came as the International Crisis Group called on the West to drop travel bans and an asset freeze imposed on Zimbabwe's elite, and suggested that Mugabe and other leaders be offered immunity from prosecution as a way out of the country's economic and political crisis.
Mugabe and his allies are believed to fear charges in connection with the massacres of thousands by government security forces in Matabeleland in the 1980s. A report by the Roman Catholic Church estimated that about 20,000 people were killed.
Former Liberian President Charles Taylor was arrested last year and became the first former African leader to face an international tribunal on war crimes charges, over his alleged role in Sierra Leone's civil war. He had been in exile in Nigeria since he relinquished power in 2003.
