GOVERNMENT AND RENAMO START FOURTH DIALOGUE POINT

The Mozambican government and Renamo on Monday entered into the fourth and final point on the agenda for their dialogue, that concerning economic issues, despite complete deadlock on the key issue of disarming and disbanding the Renamo militia.After the 111th round of the dialogue, which has been under way for more than two years, the head of the government delegation, Agriculture Minister Jose Pacheco, said that Renamo “wants to share its ideas about the distribution of resources in our country”. He believed the government “will certainly have a different type of approach, but it’s a good step and we are on the final stretch in terms of our agenda”.The head of the Renamo delegation, Saimone Macuiana, said that the Renamo proposal was concerned with “creating conditions so that the resources existing n the county can benefit the majority of Mozambicans”.Speaking for the mediators, retired Anglican bishop Dinis Sengulane, said the mediating team was encouraged by the start of this final agenda point, and he appealed to the two sides to speed up their discussions. Instead of counting the rounds of dialogue upwards, instead there should be a countdown, he urged, so that in the near future the two delegations could talk about the “penultimate” and “final” rounds.Sengulane claimed that “the fact we are entering on the fourth point means that the dialogue is producing results”.This optimism ignores the awkward reality that there is no consensus on point two, on defence and security matters, with Renamo still insisting on a share-out of senior military positions between itself and the government.Furthermore, point three, on the separation of political parties and the state, is not entirely resolved, with Renamo still insisting that the agreements reached should be rubber-stamped into law by the country’s parliament, the Assembly of the Republic.The Assembly is unlikely to accept this diktat, especially since the second opposition force, the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), has already submitted a bill on the same subject, which should be debated in the current parliamentary sitting.