Understatement of the Week in the New York Times

Celia Dugger addresses the question of whether the opposition M.D.C. will offer an amnesty to ZANU-PF officials.

“We wanted to find out if it would be possible to have amnesty dating back to 1980s,” the official said. “The M.D.C. did not sound very forthcoming.”

Indeed, the opposition has so far offered no such assurances.

“I’d rather rot in hell than agree to anything like that,” said Roy Bennett, the opposition’s third-highest ranking official.