WASHINGTON — Zimbabwe dictator Robert Mugabe turned the UN climate-change summit in Copenhagen into a farce yesterday, laughing off the travel sanctions of Western governments and throwing the harsh disapproval of his Danish hosts back in their faces.
Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said his government had no choice but to allow Mugabe to attend the conference, just as New York City or the United States have no choice when horrible heads of state attend UN meetings in Manhattan.
“That is the spirit of the UN — that the world needs a place where we can meet with those we basically don’t like,” Rasmussen explained to reporters who had inquired about Mugabe’s attendance. “And I guess that is how you can characterize the person you’re asking about.”
But the real reason for Mugabe’s trip is that it’s his only chance to go shopping in Europe while he’s under an international travel ban, said Stanford Mukasa, a professor at Indiana University of Pennsylvania who has studied Zimbabwe and Mugabe.
“Mugabe has nothing to offer to the climate-control conference because he is one of the guilty parties by his deliberate policies at home,” Mukasa said.
And even as Mugabe thumbed his nose at the world, the host country welcomed him.
“I see no problem in greeting him,” Rasmussen said, but added: “Nobody can be in doubt about my attitude toward Zimbabwe and Mugabe.”
Mugabe is banned by the European Union from traveling to member states, including Denmark, as part of sanctions intended to pressure him to into allowing political reforms and improving the African nation’s awful human-rights record.
Mugabe’s attendance had many critics saying the global environmental summit stands revealed as a farce.
“This finally exposes what this whole conference is about,” said a senior Republican aide on Capitol Hill.
“Thank God Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot didn’t figure out they could fund their dictatorships with this global-warming hoax,” the aide said. “This guy’s just showing up to collect his check.”
Under the plans being considered at the UN conference, developed countries such as the United States and European nations will pay billions to Third World countries such as those in Africa to pay for the alleged effects of global warming.
According to African press accounts, Mugabe aims to offer strategies to curb the climate change he believes has caused protracted droughts, floods and erratic rains in Zimbabwe. But Mugabe has been widely condemned for disastrous management of his country’s resources — including stripping lands from competent farmers and giving them to cronies — and turning Zimbabwe from Africa’s breadbasket into a basket case.
Nonetheless, he is set to address the summit later in the week. As a head of state, Mugabe will attend a dinner tomorrow hosted by Denmark’s Queen Margrethe II.
Mugabe was joined by his wife and a huge delegation — as many as 59 other people.
The dictator, who has held a stranglehold on power since 1980 — an era marked by violence and intimidation and by a decreasing tolerance of political opposition — and his trip to Denmark was denounced by human-rights groups abroad and back home.
Political opponents at home accused Mugabe of wasting Zimbabwe’s precious resources by taking such an expensive junket on top of the more than $28 million he has already spent this year on foreign trips.
They also accused him of hypocrisy and blamed him for much of the environmental degradation that has occurred under his long reign, including the extensive loss of forests and the poaching of wildlife.
Upon arrival in Denmark, Mugabe said he expected from the Copenhagen conference “what everybody else hopes to get — an agreement.”
He said he felt perfectly welcomed.
“I am a member of the world population,” he told reporters. “I’m only one dot in the population. I am a member of the world. Why should I feel isolated?”
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said yesterday that if negotiators cannot resolve stalemates before leaders, including President Obama, arrive tomorrow, the outcome will be either a “weak one, or there will be no agreement.”
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will travel to Copenhagen for meetings tomorrow as well, and then join Obama when he arrives, a State Department official said.
At the center of the summit tension is an alliance of China, India, Brazil and South Africa, which are demanding that richer nations cut emissions and pay poorer countries to slow climate change.
The European Union has offered about $10 billion to fight global warming, and a Japanese newspaper reported yesterday that Tokyo would offer a similar amount over three years to 2012.
But the US position is unclear. The latest draft accords indicated that negotiators are getting farther apart, not closer.
China, the world’s largest polluter, accused the United States and other developed countries yesterday of trying to escape their responsibilities.
“We still maintain that developed countries have the obligation to provide financial support,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said. With Post Wire Services