The MoD said the exercise was "absolutely not" connected to the situation in Zimbabwe. "This is a long-planned air concentration exercise, the first of a series of trials that will be taking place twice a year," a spokesman said. The Foreign Office last night played down any connection between the dispatch of the troops and the crisis in Zimbabwe. "We keep contingency plans up to date for most parts of the world, but we are not moving to implement any such plans for Zimbabwe," said a spokesman. "A large-scale military operation does not fit in with what we estimate is required. If it were needed, there are contingency plans and they could be implemented in a short time."
But defence officials said the paratroopers were part of the contingency plans and would be ideally placed if troops were needed for a defensive escort for any evacuation. "There is a lack of willingness by UK Plc to get involved because any intervention will be bloody and if we are forced to go in, it will not be easy," said one official. "Zimbabwe is a well-armed country. "But if the war veterans start to evict farmers and there is mass slaughter of UK nationals we will be forced to intervene." Military planners at Northwood were putting the final touches to an evacuation operation which could require British troops to go in for a very brief period "possibly just 24 hours", the officials said. "The obvious evacuation route is by road, but they could easily block this and we must therefore plan for an air intervention as we did in Sierra Leone two years ago."
The paratroopers would support the SAS in providing a defensive ring for an operation known as a rapid air landing, in which RAF transports would fly into Harare airport to take out the Britons. They would be escorted by Tornado ground attack aircraft and in the second phase of the evacuation the Britons would be flown out in a so-called tactical air land operation.***
Computers, recording and editing equipment, files and furniture were destroyed at the Voice of the People offices in Harare's Milton Park suburb. Most of the roof of the converted suburban home collapsed. No one was in the building at the time of the attack around 1:00 a.m. (2300 GMT) and there were no injuries. The independent human rights group Amani Trust, meanwhile, said police raided its office in downtown Harare later Thursday, detaining one official for questioning. The trust, a research and care group for the victims of political violence and torture, said Dr. Frances Lovemore, a medical specialist in violence trauma, was taken by police for questioning at the main Harare police station.
Central Intelligence Organization agents took away documents compiled by the trust on political violence that has left nearly 200 people dead in the past two years, most of them opposition supporters. State television, in its nightly news, said the government dismissed reports, evidently attributed to Lovemore, that girls and women were being sexually abused by ruling party militants and members of the state National Youth Service in rural camps. ***