US wants "Comrade Bob" out, transitional government in Zimbabwe: senior official***WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States is urging Zimbabwe's neighbors to step up pressure on President Robert Mugabe to hand power to a transitional government to pave the way for new elections, a senior State Department official said. "What we're telling them is there has to be a transitional government in Zimbabwe that leads to a free and fair, internationally supervised election," the official said. "That is the goal, he stole the last one, we can't let that happen again," the official said, referring to a widely condemned election last March in which Mugabe won re-election. "It has to be internationally supervised, open, transparent with an electoral commission that works," the official told reporters on condition of anonymity.
The official would not say whether Washington had gotten positive reactions to its call from any specific country in the region, but said generally the "neighborhood" was increasingly aware of the problems posed by Mugabe's rule. "The neighborhood -- meaning southern Africa -- is realizing that this is not going well, this is breaking bad," the official said. "The food situation is going to get nothing but worse, the economic scene is disastrous."***
Pvt. Christopher Muzvuru, 21, was killed April 6 when his unit overran the town of Basra. But in Harare, the Zimbabwean capital, the state media have called him a mercenary and a sellout.
"For a Zimbabwean, whose country is virtually at war with Britain, to join the armed forces of an enemy is the highest level of selling out," was the comment from the Daily Mirror in Harare, a paper owned by a member of Mr. Mugabe's ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party.
"He should be buried in Britain," the paper said. The government-owned Herald newspaper likened Pvt. Muzvuru to the buffalo soldiers in Bob Marley's reggae song about former slaves who fought in the American Civil War.
Pvt. Muzvuru's parents have declined to comment, but a friend of the family told The Washington Times that they were living in terror in their hometown of Gweru, in central Zimbabwe.
"They have been visited by Mugabe's secret police and harassed by the government, and it is very painful for them," said the man, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal.
"They are in deep mourning for their son, and all the government can do is portray the young man as a traitor and his family as enemies of the state."
In London, a spokesman for the Ministry of Defense confirmed that Pvt. Muzvuru joined the army in February 2001 and was one of about 200 Zimbabweans in the British forces.***