Sources in the Southern African Development Community say the regional organization will ask South African President Jacob Zuma to travel to Zimbabwe next week though there has been no visible progress in intra-governmental talks urged by SADC's troika on politics earlier this month in Maputo, Mozambique.
Since the Maputo meeting, negotiators for the three governing parties in Harare have failed to meet.
Last week a meeting was postponed because of the absence of ZANU-PF chief negotiator and Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa. That meeting was been rescheduled to Friday but sources say convening the discussions looks doubtful again as Welshman Ncube, representing the Movement for Democratic Change formation of Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara is in Belgium. Political sources said he is due back on Friday but the meeting might not happen.
SADC Executive Secretary Tomaz Salomao said that the talks are proceeding, but acknowledged that SADC has had no official communications from the Harare government or the negotiators.
Political analyst Msekiwa Makwanya told VOA Studio 7 reporter Blessing Zulu that the principals in Harare are not taking the crisis seriously.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, head of the main MDC formation, left Thursday for North Africa where he was to brief Libyan leader and African Union President Muammar Gaddafi on progress by the unity government and SADC in resolving outstanding issues troubling the power sharing arrangement. Like SADC, the African Union is a guarantor of the 2008 Global Political Agreement for power-sharing in Harare.
