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Monday, January 21, 2002 - Web posted at 1:09:42 pm GMT

HARARE - Zimbabwe's state-run radio reported on Monday that Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo had warned that a land pact he brokered last year to end often violent land grabs risked collapse.

Obasanjo, on a visit to Harare, made the comments after meeting Zimbabwe leader Robert Mugabe over the land crisis spawned by invasions of white-owned farms over the past two years by militants loyal to the ruling ZANU-PF party. "Parties to the Abuja agreement should work towards ensuring that the agreement does not become a dead letter and make it work," the radio said in a commentary on Obasanjo's remarks.

Other news organisations had no access to Obasanjo during his brief visit to Zimbabwe to speak to the government and the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) about the land pact agreed in Abuja in September.

Nigerian officials said Obasanjo's talks with Mugabe would also include the Zimbabwean government's controversial media bill -- expected to be debated in parliament on Tuesday -- which bans foreigners from working as journalists in Zimbabwe.

Mugabe promised regional leaders a week ago to hold fair presidential elections on March 9-10 and allow foreign media and independent poll observers to cover the vote.

Western governments are placing Mugabe and his lieutenants under increasing pressure over the way they are governing Zimbabwe, its human rights record and its introduction of laws seen shackling opposition to its rule.

Farmers and critics say Mugabe has largely ignored the Abuja Agreement to end farm invasions which began in February 2000, but his ministers say the government is respecting the accord.

Nine white farmers have been killed, scores of black farm workers assaulted and thousands of others displaced since 2000.

Mugabe says some 4,500 white farmers occupy 70 percent of Zimbabwe's best farmland. He wants to seize at least 8.3 million hectares of the 12 million in white hands.

On Monday, Obasanjo said an expected report by a United Nations Development Programme technical team which visited Zimbabwe in December may help move the land reform process forward and facilitate the release of funds pledged by Britain for fair and and orderly land programmes, the radio said.

Obasanjo met with MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who poses the stiffest challenge to Mugabe's 22-year grip on power in the March elections against the background of an unprecedented political and economic crisis.

Obasanjo's arrival late on Sunday was preceded by violence in which 20 people were injured and thousands teargassed when the police and militants from Mugabe's ZANU-PF party broke up an MDC rally in Zimbabwe's second city of Bulawayo.

Police denied attacking the opposition, which has a strong presence in Bulawayo, and said they had intervened only to break up fighting between rival groups.

Militants, led by veterans of Zimbabwe's 1970's war against white minority rule, say the land invasions are a show of support for Mugabe's own forcible acquisition of white-owned farms for redistribution to landless blacks.

Obasanjo told a welcoming party of thousands of ZANU-PF supporters on Sunday night he had come to "see and dialogue" in the best interests of Africa and Zimbabwe.

"We are here for the best interests of the people and leaders of Zimbabwe and the people of Africa," he said.

The radio did not report any comments Obasanjo may have made on the media bill due to come before parliament on Tuesday after a week's delay called by the government to make changes to it.

Mugabe accuses foreign news organisations and the private media in Zimbabwe of backing a campaign by his opponents locally and abroad to topple him in retaliation for the land seizures.

Zimbabwean journalists vowed on Saturday to launch a series of protests from Tuesday against planned legislation they say will severely undermine media freedom and which has been criticised by the United States and European Union.

Under the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Bill, foreign journalists would be barred from Zimbabwe and all reporters and media organisations would have to register with a government-appointed body or risk a two-year jail term.

Mugabe, who turns 78 next month, seems determined to ignore threats of international sanctions in his campaign to retain the power he has held since he led the former British colony of Rhodesia to independence in 1980.

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