Posted on 02/18/2002 12:46:14 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
HARARE, Zimbabwe - Prompting fears that food will be used as a political tool to win key elections, the government set up a task force headed by its feared intelligence chief to distribute emergency food imports, state media reported Sunday.
Opposition leaders said they feared that the appointment of Minister of State Security Nicholas Goche, head of the Central Intelligence Organization, meant that food would be used as a tool to help President Robert Mugabe win hard-fought presidential elections scheduled for March 9-10.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change said it was concerned that their strongholds would be starved of the emergency food.
Mugabe promised "no one will die of hunger. Maize is being delivered to every corner of the country," state radio reported Sunday.
Mugabe flew to Mozambique Sunday to meet with Malawian President Bakili Muluzi and Mozambican President Joachim Chissano to discuss the situation in his country.
He promised them the elections would be "just, free and fair," Mozambican state television reported Sunday evening, after the meeting in the port city of Beira ended.
Meanwhile, European Union officials were preparing for their Monday meeting in Brussels, where they were to discuss what action to take against Zimbabwe for throwing out their top election observer Pierre Schori Saturday.
EU officials have threatened to withdraw all their observers and impose sanctions that could include aid cuts and a travel ban on Mugabe and other government officials.
But Schori said sanctions would be a "worst case scenario," speaking to Britain's Sky News upon his arrival in London on an overnight flight from Harare.
After Sunday's Beira meeting, Mugabe said Schori had not been invited to lead European election observers, but arrived on a tourist visa and insisted he would still lead the mission. Zimbabwe did not recognize him as head of any EU observers.
"What cheek," Mugabe said. "No one can invite himself without one's permission. What he did was unlawful, irregular and dishonest," Mugabe said in remarks broadcast by Zimbabwe state television.
Mugabe said Africans were capable of running their own elections without outside supervision, the television reported.
President Joachim Chissano of Mozambique said he was "astonished" Schori arrived as a tourist "when he knew he was coming for a different purpose," the television said.
"It is regrettable. He is my friend. He was a good supporter of liberation movements" in the colonial era in southern Africa, Chissano said.
In November, the World Food Program said that more than half a million rural Zimbabweans faced acute food shortages and many others were eating only one meal a day.
It blamed the shortages on Zimbabwe's political and economic crises and the agricultural disruptions caused by ruling party militants' occupation of white-owned farms. Floods and erratic rainfall were also to blame, the WFP said.
Why aren't Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton over there helping these folks out I wonder?
Discussing sanctions.
I think they know Mugabe won't let them muscle in on his action.
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