Robert Mugabe unsettles the EU

The columnist Dominic Lawson is not convinced that Gordon Brown's refusal to attend the EU-Africa summit will be very effective. "Like most (if not all) sanctions, this has the effect of making us feel slightly more virtuous while doing nothing to end the oppression it is notionally designed to deter. I would imagine that Robert Mugabe would be delighted if his presence in Lisbon turns out to be the cause of Britain's absence from the table; and if Portugal should rescind its invitation, does anyone seriously imagine that this would do anything to put a single extra gram of maize into the mouths of Zimbabwe's children – or accelerate by one second the ending of Mugabe's rule? ... The view that it was sanctions that brought an end to white apartheid rule in South Africa is a common misconception."

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