Madam, - Perhaps the reason other African states do not intervene to remove Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe is respect for an OAU agreement made in Addis Ababa in 1965, and proposed by Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, that African states would not interfere in the internal affairs of other African states.
It was an agreement that was honoured for many years. As a result, inter-state wars in sub-Saharan Africa were avoided and the principle of non-interference gave stability to many fragile entities. Ironically, it was Nyerere himself who - on the pretext of an incursion on his north-western border - first broke his own principle and ousted Idi Amin of Uganda by force. It was an invasion that broke Tanzania's coffers and with which Tanzania received no Western assistance. Milton Obote was returned to power in Uganda and even more people were killed than had died under the previous dispensation.
Since then - for instance, with the collapse of the Zaire/Congo state - many other African states, including Zimbabwe and Uganda, reverted to a much older practice of simply moving in and plundering everything they could get.
Non-intervention protects weak states which may be benign as well as predatory ones which may be strong: it is a principle whose effects should not be completely discounted. Somewhere in all of this the politics of African compromise have to come into play, and the best that can be hoped for is a deal brokered by the big men of the surrounding states leading to a transition within ZANU/PF that leaves in place many of the existing players; cold comfort for a great many Zimbabweans. - Yours, etc,
EOIN DILLON, Ceannt Fort, Mount Brown, Dublin 8.