ANDREW MARR: Good morning.

Could I start with what Archbishop John Sentamu was saying, which was that it could be a good first move, a good next move, to close our embassy, to close Zimbabwe's embassy and downgrade it?

LORD MALLOCH BROWN: Well I think the Italians have proposed that all of the Europeans do that, including ourselves obviously. And I suspect it's one of the things that'll be discussed. There are some practical difficulties about it. We have 14,000 British citizens in Zimbabwe, and we're pretty worried about their status at the moment.

They've not been targeted but there's a risk and we want to be able to track and monitor their situation. So we're uneasy about this but frankly everything's on the table now, what he's done has put Mugabe outside the pale of the international community and more. And we've got to see what works in terms of ending this regime.

ANDREW MARR: I was very struck to hear Archbishop Tutu talking about military intervention now, and indeed Archbishop Sentamu as well. Is that also on the table, do you think?

LORD MALLOCH BROWN: Well I think these are two men who can talk about it, and raise it in a way that when a British minister does it it's immediately sort of labelled as some colonial adventure. The fact is if law and order breaks down in the country, or if Mugabe is utterly resistant to change and continues to oppress violently people's human rights, then I hope the African neighbours will do whatever it takes to secure his departure and a democratic government.

ANDREW MARR: That's what we've got now, isn't it really?

LORD MALLOCH BROWN: Well we're getting, yes, we're very close, and I think, you know, the point is you start with political and economic pressures and you work up through the repertoire. But what you cannot accept is the status quo continuing. President Mugabe has to go.

ANDREW MARR: And so what do you want to see happening at this conference? What do you want to see Thabo Mbeki saying and doing?

LORD MALLOCH BROWN: Well first of course you know there are now many voices in South Africa including Archbishop Tutu. But President Mandela and Mr. Zuma the likely next leader of the country, the trade unions and other civil society leaders who've already spoken out very clearly, so at this point President Mbeki appears pretty isolated within South Africa. But what we want to see from this summit, and we're observers and what they do is their business not ours, this is not like some of the meetings Mugabe's been to in Europe. So we have to respect that fact.

But nevertheless I would want to remind the AU that if they bravely adopted a procedure by which it wouldn't sit undemocratically elected leaders. Now I suspect in practice if Mugabe goes nobody's going to slam the door shut on him. But I would expect them to tell him unequivocally whether it's in private session, probably rather more likely than the public one, that this just, they can't wear this, they cannot accept a president in their midst who's come back to power through this route.

ANDREW MARR: One of the things that's been suggested for dictators, people in the past who've been behaving in a despotic fashion, is that actually they should be given safe passage to somewhere else to live out the last of their years quietly, out of harms way. Is that the kind of thing that should happen to Mugabe?

LORD MALLOCH BROWN: Well I suspect, frankly if that was what he wanted, if he reached out for that I'm sure people would respond. It's frankly, as an old UN man I can tell you very, very dangerous, this business of offering people immunity for them to leave office. Because, as you subsequently discover the scale of their human rights crimes, rightly there's an outcry that they should face justice.

I think for that reason what President Mugabe himself is said to be seeking, were he to arrive at the point he feels he's got to step down, is the right, like Ian Smith, the last white leader of Zimbabwe had, which is to stay on in the country because frankly it may be the one place he feels safe.

ANDREW MARR: Mmm. You've mentioned the international community, of course you were right beside the leader of the United Nations for a very long time. What can that body do? Archbishop Sentamu was saying he'd like to see the UN take a lead which could in turn trigger military action if that is the final resort. Is that the sort of thing that should be happening?

LORD MALLOCH BROWN: Well there's going to be a very, the Americans who are currently just chairing the Security Council in a strong statement from President Bush yesterday said that with the support of us and others they'd be introducing a resolution this coming week which amongst other things would propose sanctions. And again, it's an escalator - you start with certain economic measures and political measures - if they don't work you continue to up the ante. But I think the big difference now for President Mugabe is, in the past you couldn't get a majority in the Security Council to condemn him, let alone even a majority to agree that Zimbabwe should be discussed.

We've passed both those thresholds now with the statement the Council made last week. And in that sense Mugabe's old line which is this is him versus Britain and America, and one or two European allies of ours, has fallen away. This is Mugabe against the world and that makes both sanctions and other political pressures much more plausible because they will be universal. In the past what he called sanctions were a very limited set of European and American measures against individuals around him. We can now go way beyond that to global measures.

ANDREW MARR: There are still a lot of British companies, British-led companies, and indeed British politicians with investments in Zimbabwe. What should they be doing?

LORD MALLOCH BROWN: Well look, I think the first things is that these companies until now have been within the law as it currently stands so, you know, I think people, they shouldn't get the opprobrium for somehow having breached the law or being sanctions-busting. The sanctions didn't govern the activities they were involved in. But now the game is changing, now as I said everything's on the table. And I think you will see initially not just deepened measures against these individuals who surround Mugabe to kind of hit their global wealth wherever it is.

But you'll see measures against companies that, international companies that trade with government entities, that have government bank accounts. So I think all of these companies, British and other companies, will find that actually the knot is tightening and that a lot of activities they can do till now they won't be able to do going forward.

ANDREW MARR: And British politicians?

LORD MALLOCH BROWN: Well I think the British politicians will have to look at that. Again, at the moment their investments, there's been nothing wrong with them. But we're going to move the goalposts. You know, I think they as a matter of conscience, and political, frankly political good judgment, are going to want to look carefully at their investment portfolios.

ANDREW MARR: We've talked a lot about South Africa in the course of this programme. What about China, because that's also where Robert Mugabe's getting a lot of his support, or has in the past?

LORD MALLOCH BROWN: Well I went to Beijing last year and proposed to them that they drop as much of the financial support to Zimbabwe as they could. And at that point they announced they were stopping development assistance, and limiting themselves to humanitarian assistance. But we do believe there remain contacts between Chinese state companies and mining companies.

ANDREW MARR: It wasn't long ago all those guns were coming in by boat.

LORD MALLOCH BROWN: Exactly, and a Chinese company tried to deliver guns. So I think, you know, this is another case where China, worried about reputational risk in the run-up to the Olympics, has every interest in making sure that its behaviour is consistent with the rest of the international community. It voted for the condemnation of Mugabe last week at the Security Council, the pressure will be on it to raise its game on Zimbabwe generally.

ANDREW MARR: And finally, since we're talking about China, are we getting anywhere, is the international community getting anywhere when it comes to Tibet?

LORD MALLOCH BROWN: Somewhere! In that, well there's just about to be the second meeting between the Dali Lama's representatives and the Chinese authorities which came out of a plea by Gordon Brown to the Chinese to kind of re-engage and negotiate.

On the debit side there's still not media access again to Tibet. There have been some very worrying issues in terms of crackdown on Tibet activists in Tibet. So, you know, we've won one but not won others. It's a cup half full situation and I think, you know, we've got to continue to press for China to do more...

ANDREW MARR: And if, when you go out to Sharm-el-Sheikh today, there's calls for a government of national unity, Mugabe with his former opposition opponents getting together round the table, what would your reaction be to that?

LORD MALLOCH BROWN: Well look, at some point or other there's got to be a combination of political forces because I think it's actually been clear that neither side can govern alone.

The MDC opposition control the parliament, Mugabe couldn't govern without them unless he browbeat or bullied them, or bribed them, some of them into joining him. But the fact is the benchmark for any discussion is that Morgan Tsvangirai won the last honest vote. He should be the senior partner. If he wants to invite in some people from the Mugabe party to join him that's fine.

ANDREW MARR: That way round.

LORD MALLOCH BROWN: That way round.

ANDREW MARR: Malloch Brown thank you very much indeed for coming in.

LORD MALLOCH BROWN: Thank you Andrew.

This transcript of Africa Minister Lord Malloch Brown's interview on the BBC was issued by the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office June 29 2008