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President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, right, and President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa in Harare, Zimbabwe on Saturday.

This morning’s urging from abroad for President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe contained familiar words almost three weeks after an election — “release the results as a matter of urgency” — but the sender this time was South Africa, his neighbor to the south.

South African officials are often seen as handling Mr. Mugabe with kid gloves, but that impression was brought out in sharp relief over the weekend when President Thabo Mbeki visited Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe.

After weeks of media coverage reporting a situation that very much looked like a crisis for democracy — not to mention the country’s devastated economy — a headline shot around the world via Reuters: No crisis in Zimbabwe, Mbeki says.

Mr. Mbeki defended his “quiet diplomacy” approach in a BBC interview, saying “the solution to the problem of Zimbabwe lies in the hands of the people of Zimbabwe.” But the people’s votes were exactly what seemed to be at stake, according to several important world leaders on Wednesday:

“No one thinks, having seen the results at polling stations, that President Mugabe has won this election,” [Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain] said. “A stolen election would not be a democratic election at all.”

And the American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, said, “We think it’s very important that the election not be stolen, that the results are released in a way that has credibility and reflects the will of the people of Zimbabwe.”

That apparent contradiction between the South African government’s attitude and the Western view left a conservative blogger spouting a handful of unkind words: “Thabo Mbeki Makes No Sense.”

With his words sparking so much criticism, Mr. Mbeki apparently chose silence on Wednesday as he sat in a prominent seat — as it happens, he is also this month’s president of the United Nations Security Council. On Wednesday, he did not mention Zimbabwe during a day-long Council session, as particularly strong talk was heard from others.

Even the editorial page of The Washington Post took notice this week, asserting that “Mr. Mbeki’s perverse and immoral policy is reaching its nadir.” If that was indeed a low point, today’s news could prove to be the first sign of a rebound for Mr. Mbeki’s reputation.