HARARE, Zimbabwe — Zimbabwe’s state-owned media have a trick up their sleeve when new ambassadors present their credentials to President Robert Mugabe.

Let loose after the ceremony, they pounce on the rookie envoys to ask something bound to compromise them such as, “Should sanctions against Zimbabwe be lifted?” The newcomers then make a diplomatically optimistic statement which is then spun by the state media into a ringing endorsement of the Mugabe regime.

The diplomats then spend a good deal of time and energy in their first weeks in office seeking to “clarify” what they actually said.

No, they didn’t say “sanctions should be lifted.” They said that once the terms agreed by all three parties in government had been fulfilled, “sanctions would naturally go.” Not quite the same thing.

The Swedish ambassador to Harare spent the entire duration of his assignment in Harare wishing he hadn’t pledged himself to “build bridges” between Zimbabwe and the West. When he departed last month after a four-year stay, he was excoriated by the state media for having plotted behind the scenes to pile pressure on Mugabe to deliver meaningful change. Meanwhile, his colleagues derided his naivety in thinking he could build bridges, a galling predicament for an old Africa hand who had served elsewhere in the region in the 1980s.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/zimbabwe/101004/zimbabwe-news-robert-mugabe-diplomacy