JON SNOW: Well now earlier I spoke to the Foreign Office Minister Mark Malloch Brown who's in Sharm el Sheikh at the African Union summit and I began by asking him how other leaders of the African Union have had moral authority over Robert Mugabe when so many of them could not claim to the democrats.
LORD MALLOCH BROWN: Well, you know, there are a lot with democratic blemishes and a lot who in recent years have done things to correct that (indistinct) yes beyond that there's a hard core who've never really put themselves up for an election. But, you know, Mugabe's problem is he claims to be a democrat and isn't and that's what's put him on the wrong side of the argument here. And I must say I've been surprised how in the private discussions how forthright some of the leaders are. You know they frankly make some of us back in the UK look quite pale in our commentary on the subject.
SNOW: Well sitting in Egypt and the President Mubarak can never be said to have really subjected himself to what anybody would regard as a democratic process.
MALLOCH BROWN: I think that's, that's right, I mean, democracy is very much something which, which is growing and not established fully across the whole continent. But again, you know, leaders need to kind of live by the principles they've set themselves up to be judged by and President Mugabe as he was, you know, declared that he's been elected at the ballot box each time since 1980. He put himself to that test again, failed in the first round and then fell back in to the most despotic, violent ways to overcome that. He has in front of all his African neighbours and peers lost his democratic franchise or democratic legitimacy if you will and I think that's the point at which Africa starts.
SNOW: Well the difficulty here is that it looks very much like double standards. I mean strategically we're much more desperate to have Mr Mubarak onside that we are to have Mr Mugabe.
MALLOCH BROWN: No I don't think so. I want to see democracy in Egypt, I hope that, you know, we will see a continued pro, process of democratisation there but the fact is, you know, Egypt really never had proper democracy and this has been, you know, and, and so it's way further back in the line if you like in that sense.
But the challenge here is to not have what had happened in Zimbabwe; it's first sort of years of independence where building on its economic success, it was on the way to be a pluralistic country, we don't want that thrown in to reverse. So I don't think it's a double standard, it's all about trying to keep the trajectory of democracy and respect for human rights moving forward.
SNOW: What, what's your sense there? I mean there's obviously some strong talk behind the scenes but do you think in fact the African Union is going to come out with something very robust?
MALLOCH BROWN: The, the devil will be in the detail, the fine print of that. If it's just a kind of general pat on everybody's shoulders (indistinct) make up, kiss, join together in some kind of Government that could be very, very dangerous because it could reduce international pressure on Zimbabwe to, indeed, conform with these demands for democracy on it.
If on the other hand there is some fine print to this and it's all about appointing a mediator to work from the AU with perhaps President Mbeki the current mediator and to do it around the principles that the only democratic test we have is the one that Morgan Tsvangirai won and that what has happened since is a real black mark for which Mugabe can not be excused or forgiven. If it starts from those principles then negotiation can get us to the right place.
SNOW: British Foreign Office Minister Mark Malloch Brown talking to us earlier from Sharm el Sheikh.
Transcript issued by the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office July 1 2008
