Posted on 06/10/2002 2:21:10 AM PDT by Clive
author/source:Daily Telegraph (UK)
published:Mon 10-Jun-2002
posted on this site:Mon 10-Jun-2002
Article Type : News
"There is no doubt that the presence in Europe of this individual is extremely distasteful" President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe was in Rome last night, exploiting a loophole in the travel ban on his regime to make his first trip to Europe since sanctions were imposed.
Flaunting his freedom to attend official United Nations functions, Mr Mugabe flew via London and landed at Ciampino military airport in Rome at dawn on Saturday to take part in a world food summit, Italian sources said.
The British Government said it was "not aware" that Mr Mugabe had transited through Britain, but could not rule out the possibility.
A Foreign Office spokesman said last night: "There is no doubt that the presence in Europe of this individual is extremely distasteful. But of course we accept that our European Union partners are bound by their treaty obligations."
Mr Mugabe's trip is the second time he has side- stepped the travel ban imposed by the EU and America in February in response to the violence and fraud surrounding the Zimbabwean presidential election campaign.
Also, the assets of Mr Mugabe and his entourage were frozen.
Last month the president got around the "smart sanctions" by attending the United Nations General Assembly in New York, exploiting an agreement that obliges America to permit access to the UN headquarters for any head of state not banned by the UN itself.
On the way home, his delegation passed through Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.
Zimbabwean ministers said the trip was proof of the sanctions' ineffectiveness and boasted that Mr Mugabe had "25 green lights to travel anywhere he wishes".
British officials insist that the travel ban "has had an impact".
Whitehall sources said Mr Mugabe and his lieutenants have been refused visas to enter Europe three times in the past six weeks. Augustine Chihuri, Zimbabwe's police commissioner, was refused permission to enter Spain after a trip to Lyons, France, for an Interpol meeting. Germany declined to give a visa to Stan Mudenge, the foreign minister, and Mr Mugabe was refused permission to enter France when he refuelled in Paris and he had to stay on the transit side of the airport.
Unlike the American ban, the EU sanctions do not apply to the families of government members and Mr Mugabe's wife, Grace, has been given a visa by Spain, diplomatic sources in Harare said. She is expected to take advantage of the trip to buy clothes.
Italian sources said Mr Mugabe was accompanied to Rome by Mr Mudenge and the agriculture minister, Joseph Made, one of the architects of the policy of expropriating millions of acres of white-owned property.
Although Mr Mugabe's stay in Rome is limited to the summit, and mainly restricted to the confines of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation in Rome, which is organising the gathering, the trip has caused some embarrassment even before the summit formally begins today.
"It is the big scandal of the summit," an FAO source yesterday. "We have been inundated by complaints by people from around the world who are furious."
The FAO called the summit to put the world back on target to halve the number of hungry people - 800 million - by 2015, as agreed six years ago.
Zimbabwe, where a poor economy, drought and the seizure of white-owned farms have left more than five million people needing food aid, is one of six countries where the FAO said the food crisis was acute. By next year the number is expected to rise to six million.
Yesterday 118 commercial farmers waited in vain for government permission to plant wheat.
I'm surprised Mugabe is still walking around. Apparently his opposition has no capacity to eliminate him.
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