José Sócrates' challenges ahead

In its editorial, the Portuguese daily hopes that José Sócrates will be able to organise the Africa-EU summit during his tenure as President of Union, despite the thorny problems posed by Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe. "The majority of the EU countries don't want Mugabe's presence. But the African Union demands that he be invited to the summit on December 8 and 9 in Lisbon. Certain countries have already announced that they will not attend if that is the case. But José Sócrates has repeated multiple times that the summit is a priority for the Portuguese presidency. ... The last summit took place in 2000, the one slated for 2003 never took place, already due to Mugabe. It is out of the question that Robert Mugabe uses the summit to bring his country out of its deserved isolation. If we succeed in preventing this from coming to pass, Portugal will have done a real favour to Europe and Africa."

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