HARARE -- West African soccer kingpins and 2010 Africa Cup of Nations finalists, Ghana, could relieve Zimbabwe’s desperate attempts to lure a World Cup qualifying team to camp in the troubled southern African country before the tournament swings into life in South Africa in June, a Ghanaian Cabinet minister said last week.

Zimbabwe has made several failed attempts to lure some of the world’s top soccer national teams, including world champions, Brazil, England, Nigeria and Spain, to camp for the pre-tournament warm up matches in Harare.
But the pleas have been ignored because most countries are still sceptical about safety issues in Zimbabwe despite assurances by President Robert Mugabe’s new administration to end violence.

But Ghana’s tourism minister, Juliana Azumah-Mensah said on in Harare last Tuesday a deal was close to be sealed between her and Zimbabwe’s Tourism and Hospitality Industry Minister Walter Muzembi that could see the Black Stars invading Harare and parading some of Africa’s best players at the newly refurbished Rufaro stadium.
“I am talking with my brother, if possible for our team to be here before the World Cup,” Mensah told ZimOnline on the sidelines of the Africa Investor tourism investment summit in Harare.

She was not at liberty to say when Michel Essien and his troops could jet into Harare, but in the past few weeks, Zimbabwe had been promising that they were close to a deal with a national team but Muzembi had refused to disclose it citing security issues.
“There are terrorism issues involved in these issues, we will only disclose the team we are talking with at the right time,” Muzembi said in an earlier interview.
Zimbabwe has said after failing to q

ualify for the tournament, its focus had shifted from the football itself to trying to ramp up its image by attracting at least 130 000 of the 350 000 soccer tourists expected in southern Africa during the tournament.
The country has prepared 14 000 rooms for soccer tourists and has submitted a US$28 million budget to treasury. This week Zimbabwe hosted a Tourism investment Conference – that attracted 1 000 delegates from across the world, including the World Tourism Organisation, the Regional Tourist Organisation of Southern Africa, and tourism ministers from African countries including Ghana, Zambia, Sierra Leone and Cameroon – to drum up foreign investment inflows for the tourism industry