The veteran MP has been accused of handing a “huge fillip” to Zimbabwean president.
Source: Sir Nicholas Soames: Robert Mugabe meeting was ‘purely personal’ – BBC News
Sir Nicholas Soames has defended holding a personal meeting with Robert Mugabe while on a visit to Zimbabwe.
The veteran Conservative MP said he met the president last week to reminisce about his father’s role as the last governor of Southern Rhodesia.
Sir Nicholas said they met for old times’ sake, adding: “It was purely for Auld Lang Syne and I’m glad I did it.”
But Labour MP Kate Hoey called the visit a “body blow” to people who had suffered under the Mugabe regime.
The 93-year-old president has been quoted in Zimbabwean press reports saying Sir Nicholas’s visit showed the British wanted dialogue with his country.
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Ms Hoey, who chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Zimbabwe, said it had given him a “huge fillip”.
“You can’t have a private visit which is then front page of the newspapers in Zimbabwe,” she said.
She said she would be urging ministers to make clear the Mid Sussex MP had not been visiting on their behalf.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Sir Nicholas said his father Christopher Soames would not have forgiven him if he had not tried to “call on” the president.
The late Lord Soames – whose father-in-law was wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill – oversaw the transition to the independent state of Zimbabwe in 1979 and 1980.
Sir Nicholas said the UK had “terrible unresolved issues” with Zimbabwe, but described the meeting as “a historic moment for me and my family”.
Responding to Ms Hoey’s criticism that the meeting would “pander to the vanity of a wily and ruthless dictator”, he added: “I met him purely and entirely in a personal capacity – there was no-one present, it was just him and me.”
COMMENTS
Similarly, I am pretty sure that his grand father Winston Churchill would not forgive him for going there either. The Soames family are all about expediency it seems?
This guy Soames is often referred to in UK parliament as Fatty Soames – he has not done much in his life and is the last one His Excellency needs any advice from !.
It is most interesting that the BBC is now up there with the best of the Fake News Brigade like Donald Trump – why would we believe that it was purely a personal visit? Is this fake news or fake fake news!
Another British aristocrat insulting the people of Zimbabwe with his holier than though attitude. Poor Winston would be turning in his grave to know his son and grandson cowtailed to a monster than makes Hitler look like a gradeschool pupil… Indeed Mugabe once proudly claimed to be the /Black Hitler of Africa’…
The woman with whom Fatty Soames had an extramarital affair described sex with him as being like hit by a falling wardrobe with the key left in. It said so in the Daily Mail so it must be true!
Lord Christopher Soames – the guy who handed over the colony of Rhodesia to RGM was the son in law of Winston Churchill. So this Fatty Soames guy really is no blood relation of Winston Churchill.
Just to put the record straight comrades
His mother was Sir Winston’s daughter, so Sir Nicholas is his grandson.
You are correct Andrew – my apologies for my obvious mistake
Every one makes mistakes when they are young and spends the rest of their lives ahamed of them. I am ashamed that I assisted in Christopher Soames election campaign in the 1950s in Bedfordshire.