A Guest Who Will Make the Most of the Conference

Pariah in the west, hero in large parts of Africa, Robert Mugabe embodies the truculence and the tensions on display in Lisbon. He is certain to try to exploit Europe's guilt complex. Exempted from an EU travel ban in order to prevent an African boycott of the summit, the 83-year-old Zimbabwean leader will scoff at Gordon Brown's decision to stay away in protest, and celebrate his arrival in Europe as vindication.

While the Portuguese organizers are laboring to try to prevent Mugabe hijacking the summit, there are plenty of government officials in Europe who think it is Brown, not Mugabe, who is grandstanding by sending only a junior colleague, Baroness Amos.

"There is not one single reason for postponing or not having this summit," said Louis Michel, the EU's development commissioner and the man in charge of the world's biggest aid budget. "The time is now."

Yesterday European commission president José Manuel Barroso said statesmen should be more pragmatic in choosing who to meet.

"If international leaders decided not to go to those conferences involving countries which do not have reasonable human rights records, I'm afraid we would not be attending many conferences at all," he said. He added that he had told Brown: "If you are an international leader then you are going to have to be prepared to meet some people your mother would not like you to meet. That is what we have to do from time to time."

Brussels is seeking to avoid any embarrassment about Mugabe by arguing that his presence will provide the chance to talk bluntly about human rights abuses in Zimbabwe. But a 13-page document from EU and African officials preparing the summit at the end of October failed to mention Zimbabwe.

As western sanctions on Zimbabwe bite, Mugabe says he is looking to the east for help. He means China, which has supplied the gleaming blue roof tiles and other materials for Mugabe's Harare mansion.