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Ambassador Ariccia said the EU had since written to President Mugabe intimating that the bloc had decided to prepare what he referred to as a “country strategy programme.”
He said the plan was a specific procedure to prepare an agreed strategic approach within which the co-operation will be implemented.
Ambassador Ariccia said the document would be prepared jointly by the EU (in co-ordination with its member states) and the beneficiary government.
“In the letter addressed to President Robert Mugabe, the High Representative for the European Common Foreign and Security Policy/Vice-President of the European
Commission, Baroness Catherine Ashton, and the European Commissioner for Development, stated that “the European Union has decided to prepare a country strategy paper in the framework of the European Development Fund to be signed and implemented as soon as conditions allow.
“This means that the delegation and the Government of Zimbabwe will soon start preparing the strategic framework for the regular co-operation that will occur when the ‘appropriate measures’ will no longer be applied on Zimbabwe,” he said.
Last month Foreign Affairs Secretary Ambassador Joey Bimha said Zimbabwe was ready to engage the EU.
He said they were only waiting for a formal invitation by the EU to resume the dialogue.
Since the imposition of the illegal sanctions in 2002, the EU has been reluctant to engage Zimbabwe.
The European bloc continued to argue that conditions in Zimbabwe were not conducive to lift the illegal sanctions.
The sanctions were imposed illegally by the EU and the United States outside the United Nations.
In case of the EU, the sanctions were imposed in violation of the Cotonou Agreement that governs relations between African, Caribbean and Pacific countries.
Zimbabwe Government officials insist that time shall come when the EU and other countries that imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe will be falling over each other to do business with this country.
Online Reporter