Sweden appreciates the efforts by South Africa to find a solution to the political problems in neighbouring Zimbabwe, Swedish International Development Cooperation Minister Gunilla Carlsson said Thursday, according to dpa. Carlsson's remarks were made at a news conference with South African Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka at the conclusion of a two-day meeting in Stockholm of a bilateral commission. The meeting was the fifth for the commission that was formed in 1999 when the then Swedish prime minister Goran Persson visited South Africa. The South African vice president said her country and other members of the 14-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) were waiting for "recommendations" from finance ministers in the region on how to aid Zimbabwe as decided at a SADC summit in August. Mlambo-Ngcuka said SADC had urged Zimbabweans to "undertake a meaningful constitutional reform." Carlsson said Sweden was "very concerned and critical of the current situation in Zimbabwe." The delegations had also discussed the upcoming European Union-Africa summit which British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said he would stay away from if Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe attends. "We can't make one traveller jeopardize the whole summit," Mlambo-Ngcuka said. "The summit is not about one issue. There are a whole lot of issues and we don't think that all of those issues should be compromised because of that." "We will constructively find a way of making sure that we protect the broader interests of the summit which are important for both Europeans as well as for the Africans," she added. The talks in Stockholm were co-chaired by Swedish Deputy Prime Minister Maud Olofsson and included meetings with business leaders as well as discussions on climate change, support for combating HIV/AIDS and labour market reform.
