Relationship are in a book by US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in the book "The Mind of the African Strongman: Conversations with Dictators, statesmen, and father figures". Former presidents of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, and Kenya, Daniel Arap Moi, played a key role in convincing the Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama, to negotiate a peace agreement with the Mozambican government in 1992. Revelations by the former US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Herman Cohen, according to which at the same time, the United States held in Malawi a series of secret meetings with Dhlakama for the same purpose. In his book,The Mind of the African Strongman: Conversations with Dictators, statesmen, and father figures (The mind of the strong African man: talk to dictators, statesmen and paternal figures), Cohen says that President George Bush convinced the then Head of state Joaquim Chissano that negotiations were the only way to end the civil war in Mozambique. In a meeting with the thenpresident of Kenya Daniel Arap Moi, Cohen complained that Dhlakama was a leader who "is not easily communicated." Dhlakama, writes Cohen, "suspected of relations between Western countries and the Frelimo government." At that meeting, Herman Cohen recalled that the reputation of Renamo in the West was "very negative" due to its alleged violations of human rights and that the negotiations would not be easy. Moi dismissed the charges against Dhlakama. He writes: "I was certain then what would be our conduct with Dhlakama". Since then, the Minister of Kenya Foreign affairs Bethwel Kipalagat was "our connection," says Cohen. According to the former US secretary of state for Africa, the discreet help of Moi and Kipalagat was "essential" for organizers meeting in Malawi, a country that South Africa used as a transit base for weapons and logistics sent to the Renamo ". "In these meetings we needed convince Dhlakama that we were going to work for negotiations, in which everyone would gain and which would lead toelections in Mozambique," writes the former US diplomat. In another chapter of his book, Herman Cohen says, however, that these secret meetings in Malawi with the leader of Renamo in Malawi "never managed to persuade to accept fully the negotiations and enter the political life." Dhlakama had "a great paranoia and expected to be killed by the Mozambican military once entered the political life." "The person who managed to convince Dhlakama was Robert Mugabe," says Herman Cohen "I asked Mugabe who would carry out this task because he and Dhlakama are of the same ethnic group, the Shona," Cohen writes, adding that "Mugabe has succeeded where many of us fail." Former US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs also reveals in his book that the secret police of Zimbabwe did frustrate an attempt by the then Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's agents to assassinate the American ambassador in Harare. Zimbabwe transported these Iraqi agents to Cyprus in order to be interrogated by the Americans, concludes HermanCohen, whose book was launched this year in the United States.
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