The European Union looks set to allow Mr Robert Mugabe to visit Paris for the sake of preserving its wider sanctions against the Zimbabwe president.
France has asked its EU partners to grant a temporaryexemption from Mr Mugabe's EU travel ban to let him attend a Franco-African summit on February 19th-21st. It fears other African nations would boycott the summit if Mugabe is not also invited.
"We cannot prevent Mr Mugabe going to Paris because there is a good chance that France would then not agree to extending the sanctions against his regime," one EU diplomat said.
The sanctions, which include an arms embargo and thetravel ban on Mr Mugabe and his close associates, are due to expire on February 18th. Many EU states, led by Zimbabwe's former colonial power Britain, want them extended.
"The important thing is to ensure that we have the sanctionsand continue to make clear our disapproval about the way theMugabe regime works," the EU diplomat said.
The EU imposed its so-called targeted sanctions on Mr Mugabe and his regime last February, accusing them of rigging elections, stoking violence against political opponents and quashing human rights.
The EU has also criticised Mr Mugabe's policy of seizingwhite-owned farms to distribute land among landless blacks,which it says has contributed to Zimbabwe's hunger crisis.