EU to consider sanctions against Zimbabwe
European Union foreign ministers will consider imposing sanctions on Zimbabwe tomorrow unless the government of President Robert Mugabe ends political violence and takes steps to ensure March elections are free and fair.
Officials said the EU may cut 128 million euros (£90 million) aid for the 2002-2007 period and impose diplomatic sanctions, including a travel ban on Zimbabwean officials.
Over the past two years, the EU has already reduced annual development aid to Zimbabwe from 30 million euros (£20 million) to five million euros (£2.5 million).
The 15-nation EU wants Mugabe to end political violence, organise fair presidential elections, ensure freedom of the press and independence of the judiciary and end illegal occupations of white-owned farms.
It is concerned about recent legislation giving Zimbabwe police sweeping new search-and-arrest powers and a bill that would muzzle local media and seriously restrict foreign correspondents.
In a January 18 letter to the EU, Zimbabwean Foreign Minister Stanislaus Mudenge said his government will guarantee equal airtime to opposition parties ahead of the March 9-10 elections and invite foreign election observers, except those from Britain and the Netherlands.
He accused those two countries of permitting radio broadcasts from their soil that beam ‘‘anti-Zimbabwe propaganda’’.
Mudenge’s letter came a week after he held talks in Brussels on the human rights situation in his country.
At the talks, and in his letter a week later, Mudenge scolded the EU - and especially Britain - for taking an ‘‘imperious’’ attitude toward Zimbabwe by dictating how the government in Harare should behave.
In the presidential elections, Mugabe, whose ZANU-FP party holds 93 of the 150 parliamentary seats, wants to extend his 22-year rule.
His government defends the wholesale invasions of white-owned farms as a justified response to inequitable land ownership left by British colonial rule that ended in 1980.
Most of Zimbabwe’s commercial farmland is owned by whites who make up less than half a percent of the population.
Zimbabwe’s deteriorating political chaos has had an impact on the country’s economy.
The first delivery of UN famine relief arrived on January 23 in Zimbabwe - which is traditionally self-sufficient and a food exporter - to offset looming food shortages.
The World Food Program has appealed for £45 million from international donors to feed 558,000 rural Zimbabweans in need of immediate aid.
