Posted on 09/02/2002 3:41:30 PM PDT by knighthawk
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has brought his personal duel with Britain to the Earth Summit.
Mugabe, 78, drew applause from many of the delegates at the summit when he fired a salvo at Prime Minister Tony Blair, the sternest critic of Zimbabwe's seizures of white-owned farms.
"We have not asked for any inch of Europe or any square inch of that territory so, Blair, keep your England and let me keep my Zimbabwe," Mugabe said in his speech to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.
"We wish no harm to anyone, we are Zimbabweans, we are Africans, we are not English, we are not Europeans. We love Africa, we love Zimbabwe, we love our independence."
The European Union clamped personal sanctions on Mugabe and his inner circle after elections in March, citing governance, human rights and land issues.
Mugabe was strongly backed on Monday by one of his key regional supporters, Namibia.
"We here in southern Africa have one big problem, created by the British. The honourable Tony Blair is here, and he created the situation in Zimbabwe," President Sam Nujoma said.
"The EU, who have imposed the sanctions against Zimbabwe, must raise them immediately, otherwise it is useless to come here," the 73-year-old said in a finger-jabbing tirade.
Outside the summit venue, some 1,500 demonstrators marched against Mugabe. His 22-year stay in power was extended for six more years in March in presidential elections that were condemned as rigged by the opposition, the European Union, the United States and the Commonwealth.
"Jail Mugabe, Free Zimbabwe" and "Mugabe Get Out of South Africa", the mainly black South African protesters chanted.
Zimbabwe's main opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), reacted quickly to Mugabe's speech.
"Mugabe came to the stage and missed the point. It is not about a few greedy white farmers against black peasant farmers," Tendai Biti, the MDC's foreign affairs spokesman, told a news conference in Johannesburg.
"It is about a president destroying his country in an attempt to keep himself in office."
BLAIR SAYS NUJOMA NOT "VOICE OF AFRICA"
Blair had left the summit plenary session before Mugabe spoke. British officials said he had no comment to make about Mugabe's attack but Blair himself replied to Nujoma.
"What the president of Namibia said is what he's always said. It doesn't make it any more sensible," he told reporters.
"It's important that we do not get the idea that (Nujoma) is the voice of Africa. It is not," Blair said.
Mugabe has vowed to press ahead with the eviction of 2,900 of the country's 4,500 remaining white commercial farmers, a majority of whom are of British extraction.
On Monday he repeated previous assurances that all the farmers would be allowed keep at least one farm.
One of Mugabe's sternest critics, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, blamed his policies for exacerbating a food crisis in southern Africa. Nearly half the 13 million people facing starvation are Zimbabweans.
Reuters
It's his (Mugabe's) personal property, now, Mr. Blair.
Oh, there's no racism like black racism;
It makes liberal elites just glow.
There's no racism like black racism.
It's national socialism on the go.
1. Too bad this arguement did not work for South Africa
2. I wonder if the above statement applies when they start asking for food
Riiiiight.
Ok Then where do all the Africans in Europe come from? How about letting them keep their Africa back in Africa.
and Mugabe wants the rest of the world to feed these 6.5 million Zinbabwe citizens.
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