NYUSI WAS NOT TALKING ABOUT US, SAY MEDIATORS

The five mediators in the dialogue between the Mozambican government and the former rebel movement Renamo on Wednesday guaranteed that they are not the “middlemen” whom President Filipe Nyusi criticized for failing to transmit messages accurately.Speaking at an end-of-year reception in the Presidential Palace last Friday, Nyusi said he wanted to cut out “middlemen” (“intermediarios” in Portuguese) from the dialogue, and ensure direct contact between the interested parties (whom he did not specify, but he was presumably referring to himself and Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama). “The middlemen, due to the importance they want to gain from this process, sometimes do not transmit faithfully the messages sent by the parties”, Nyusi said. “But once again our common will shall emerge victorious and will triumph over distrust”.“We are called observers or mediators and not middlemen”, said Methodist pastor Anastacio Chembeze, speaking at a Maputo press conference, in the name of all the mediators. “I think the President was very clear. He spoke, with full legitimacy, of middlemen, and he did not talk about mediators or observers”. The mediators, he added, “do not see ourselves in that message. We don’t feel that message was intended for us”.A second mediator, prominent academic Lourenco do Rosario, added that many other people have been involved in peace talks in Mozambique, and Nyusi was presumably addressing them. “Everybody knows that, in addition to ourselves, many other people and groups have been active around the question of peace”, he said. Asked who these people and groups are, Rosario replied “you (the reporters) know who they are. I do not have to give their names”.At the time, much of the press had assumed that Nyusi was indeed referring to the mediators. Because of this interpretation, Rosario said, the mediators had looked into the matter and concluded that the term “middlemen” did not refer to them .“Furthermore, we believe that if the President had any problem with the mediators, he would have called us”, he added.