March 2001 Africa News Headlines

Tuesday, March 6, 2001 - Web posted at 8:13:41 AM GMT

French, Belgium relations with Mugabe dismay Zim opposition

HARARE - Zimbabwe's opposition leader said yesterday he was dismayed that some European countries believed that President Robert Mugabe could end war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), but ignored his responsibility in solving a crisis here.

"We are .... dismayed that these countries believe that Mugabe is the solution to the Congo crisis, and not the Zimbabwe crisis," Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) told AFP yesterday."

"The fact that there is a crisis in Zimbabwe does not matter, Mugabe is (taken as) another fascist African leader, what he does to his own people is of no consequence," Tsvangirai said.

Mugabe was yesterday in Brussels, where he was due to hold talks with his Belgian counterpart Guy Verhofstadt.

He was also scheduled to meet the European Union's Commissioner for Development, Poul Nielson, before travelling to Paris today for talks with French President Jacques Chirac.

Talks were expected to focus on the situation in the DRC, where Zimbabwe has stationed about a third of its troops to support the government of President Joseph Kabila.

A leading British newspaper called on Saturday for the arrest of Mugabe the moment he set foot in Brussels.

The Guardian said in an editorial that Mugabe had a strong prima facie case to answer in the light of systematic human rights abuses in Zimbabwe and that there was justification for his arrest in terms of law and international treaties.

The newspaper cited "significant intimidation" by the ruling Zanu-PF and the security forces, a government-sanctioned campaign of violence, "a frequent refusal to abide by court decisions" and serious human rights abuses.

During a meeting Sunday with Zimbabweans living in France, Mugabe spoke about his government's policy of land reform, saying the exercise was on course and that up to 60,000 families had so far been resettled since last year.

According to a report in the state-run Herald yesterday, Mugabe said he knew of no country in the world where citizens were not masters of their own economy, except in Africa, and Zimbabwe in particular."

"We want to be like the French who control their own economy," Mugabe was quoted as saying."

"There maybe some Japanese cars in Paris, but it is the French that control the economy," he said.

He said colonialism had left Zimbabweans being mere holders of political power, but that had to be corrected.

His government would use political power to acquire economic independence."

"We have to fight.

That fight is a bitter fight, because now we are going to the love and heart of the power of whites," - Nampa-Sapa-AFP

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