Last week's talks with Zimbabwe on political and media freedoms have taken the European Union closer to imposing smart sanctions on Harare, European diplomats said today.
The EU gave President Robert Mugabe's government a week to send a letter spelling out how it would act on vague commitments to accept international observers and independent media coverage for a presidential election due on March 9th and 10th.
"The EU's member states must now look at Friday's meeting and the situation on the ground with cool head and then make some call on what they want to do", one European diplomat said.
"But I feel we are probably moving closer to sanctions than we were before Friday."
Diplomats said it was too early to assume that the 15 EU foreign ministers would opt for sanctions when they discuss Zimbabwe at a meeting on January 28th in Brussels.
The action the ministers take, if any, will depend on the contents of the letter which has been sought from Harare and on political developments there.
But Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said after last week's meeting that the EU had already left it too late to ensure a free and fair election.