African leaders will step up calls on today for an end to Western sanctions against Zimbabwe and will urge South Africa to plead Zimbabwe’s cause within the Group of 20 industrial and emerging nations, officials said.

The New York Times has reported tht countries of the Southern African Development Community will also press Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, and its prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, to end their long dispute over a power-sharing pact that was holding up vital foreign aid, the officials said.

“We are convinced that if sanctions are lifted, Zimbabwe, within the framework of its current political agreement, will have the possibility to move toward development,” said Foreign Minister Alexis Thambwe Mwamba of Congo.

“We will also ask South Africa, which is the only sub-Saharan African country that is a member of the G20, to plead for Zimbabwe’s cause,” said Mr. Mwamba, whose country is taking over the chairmanship of the development community and is hosting its summit meeting in Kinshasa starting today.

The time could be right for governments to initiate foreign investment - when issues such as bureaucratic red tape and stalled legislation within party lines are showcased as continued hinderances, one must be wary that those same issues plague progress in Washington and London as well as Harare.

President Jacob Zuma of South Africa is being watched for signs he will take a tougher line toward Mr. Mugabe than did his predecessor, Thabo Mbeki. Mr. Mugabe has been the target of sanctions by the European Union and the United States, including a travel ban, based on accusations of rights abuses and vote-rigging.As excerpted from the New York Times:

Last month, Mr. Zuma called on the West to repeal the sanctions. But in what sounded like a stronger stance on Mr. Mugabe, he also stressed the need for respect for democracy and human rights.

A recovery in Zimbabwe’s battered economy is important for South Africa because millions of Zimbabweans have fled to neighboring South Africa in search of work. Zimbabwe says it needs $10 billion in foreign reconstruction aid, but Western nations are reluctant to release aid without political and economic reforms.

Mr. Mugabe and Mr. Tsvangirai, longtime foes, formed a power-sharing government in February as part of a deal, backed by the regional development community, to end a political crisis that followed disputed elections last year.

The agreement called for Mr. Tsvangirai to condemn the sanctions and call for them to be dropped, as the development community’s 15 member countries have pledged to do.

But the power-sharing deal has encountered grave problems.

Mr. Tsvangirai’s party, the Movement for Democratic Change, has accused Mr. Mugabe’s party, ZANU-PF, of failing to honor an agreement to reverse the appointments of some of the president’s political allies to key posts. In turn, ZANU-PF has charged that the Movement for Democratic Change has not done enough to have the sanctions lifted