Zimbabwe and South Africa stood shoulder-to-shoulder on Friday in refusing to recognise the Libyan Transitional National Council (NTC) – but the opposition was only symbolic as the UN General Assembly voted 114-17 to approve a seat for the rebels who toppled the regime of Muammar Gaddafi.
Fifteen countries, including Saudi Arabia, abstained from the vote.
The Southern African Development Community (Sadc) had called for a decision to be deferred to get more information on events in Libya.
The African Union (AU) has not yet recognised the transitional government, although individual countries including Nigeria, Ghana and Sudan have done so. The AU is to meet again today in New York in a bid to take a stance.
Zimbabwe, South Africa, Zambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola and Lesotho were some of the Sadc countries who voted in opposition to granting a UN seat for the rebels who took power with the help of military firepower from Western countries led by France, Britain and the United States.
They were joined in this cause by Kenya and Latin American countries including Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia and Nicaragua.
President Robert Mugabe has been on record saying the Libyan uprising was a false revolution engineered by “vampires” that sought to drain the North African country’s oil.
“We do not agree with the form of government that was in Libya,” President Mugabe said. “We looked forward to it reforming its system in its own way, not in the way they (the West) desire.” Nicaragua said it objected because the Libyan revolution against Gaddafi was backed by Nato and it was “not a real revolution”.
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“Revolution cannot be but authentic, not made by proxy or can never be seized by a cupola of states with clear hegemonic interests,” said the Nicaraguan envoy Maria de Chamorro. Venezuela’s ambassador, Jorge Valero, called Libya’s rebel leadership “a group under the guidance of the United States and Nato which has no legal or moral authority”.
Cuba’s ambassador Pedro Nuñez Mosquera said Nato had staged “a military operation to change the regime to promote their political and economic interests.” He said “thousands” of civilians were killed in Nato airstrikes since March.
But the 193-nation assembly voted overwhelmingly in favour of allowing the council’s envoys to take over the UN seat of the Gaddafi regime and to participate in the debates of the 66th session.
