Tony Blair’s Government asked South Africa to help Britain invade Zimbabwe and topple Robert Mugabe by force, Thabo Mbeki, the former president, has disclosed.

When Zimbabwe began sinking into economic collapse and political repression in 2000, South Africa and Britain held starkly differing views over how to respond to the crisis. Mr Mbeki favoured a negotiated settlement; Mr Blair wanted Mr Mugabe to go, by force if necessary.

“The problem was, we were speaking from different positions,” said Mr Mbeki, who served as South Africa’s president from 1999 until 2008. “There were other people saying ‘no, yes indeed there are political problems, economic problems, the best way to solve them is regime change. So Mugabe must go’. This was the difference. So they said ‘Mugabe must go’. But we said ‘Mugabe is part of the solution to this problem’.”

Mr Mbeki recalled an interview given by Lord Guthrie, who served as Chief of the Defence Staff and Britain’s most senior soldier throughout Mr Blair’s first government. In 2007, Lord Guthrie disclosed that “people were always trying to get me to look at” toppling Mr Mugabe by force.

He did not say whether these requests had come from Mr Blair himself. In any event, Lord Guthrie said that his advice was: “Hold hard, you’ll make it worse”, suggesting that the idea was never a serious proposition.

But Mr Mbeki noted: “There is a retired chief of the British armed forces and (he) said that he had to withstand pressure from the then prime minister of the United Kingdom, Tony Blair, who was saying to the chief of the British armed forces, ‘you must work out a military plan so we that can physically remove Robert Mugabe’.”

Mr Mbeki disclosed that South Africa, a neighbour of Zimbabwe, had been asked to help. “We had come under the same pressure and that we need to cooperate in some scheme – it was a regime change scheme – even to the point of using military force, and we said ‘no’,” said Mr Mbeki in the interview with Al-Jazeera.

He explained that the idea was rejected on principle because Britain should not be in the business of deciding who leads African countries. “You are coming from London, you don’t like Robert Mugabe for whatever reason – people in London don’t like him – and we are going to remove him and we are going to put someone else in his place? Why does it become British responsibility to decide who leads the people of Zimbabwe?” asked Mr Mbeki. “So we said ‘no, let Zimbabweans sit down, let them talk’.”

In 2000 and 2001, Mr Mugabe repeatedly accused Britain of plotting not only to overthrow his regime, but also re-colonise Zimbabwe. At various points, he said that Britain had sent “hit squads” to assassinate his cabinet and warships to intercept Zimbabwe’s fuel supplies on the high seas.