Germany Welcomes Power Shift in Zimbabwe's Parliament

Following a single-candidate presidential election and weeks of fruitless negotiations, a member of the opposition party Movement for Democratic Change was voted parliamentary speaker earlier this week.

"The German government welcomes this courageous election in the lower house as showing the spirit of change revealed in parliamentary and presidential elections this year is continuing," a Foreign Ministry spokesman in Berlin said on Wednesday, Aug. 27.

Germany regretted that talks on setting up a government of national unity in the troubled southern African country had broken down without result in recent days, the spokesman added.

Mugabe had begun to concentrate power in his own hands, he said.

But this "cynical politics of business as usual" had suffered a setback with the election of MDC candidate Lovemore Moyo as speaker on Monday, the spokesman said.

Germany called on Mugabe to restart talks with the MDC and to work towards a transitional government, he said.