- HARARE (Reuters) -- Zimbabwean
President Robert Mugabe Wednesday warned white opponents of his controversial
land reforms to cooperate, leave the country or face jail. "Those
do not deserve to be in Zimbabwe and we shall take steps to ensure that
they are not entitled to our land," Mugabe told supporters who turned
out to welcome him home from the Earth Summit in Johannesburg. He said
some Zimbabwean whites were urging former colonial power Britain to tighten
sanctions or send troops to topple him. He cited in particular two white
opposition leaders, Roy Bennett and David Coltart, who are frequent targets
of his anti-white rhetoric. "The Bennetts and the Coltarts are not
part of our society. They belong to Britain and let them go there. If they
want to stay here, we will say 'Stay here, but your place is in jail'."
He said whites should obey orders to surrender their farms if they wanted
to stay in the country. Political observers said Mugabe had often named
Bennett, a legislator for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC), and Coltart, the party's legal affairs secretary, in attacks on
white critics. "I don't think this necessarily means he is planning
specific action against them. He could be naming them as representatives
of all his critics," one observer said.
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- Mugabe lashed out at British Prime Minister Tony Blair
in an address to delegates and heads of state at the World Summit on Sustainable
Development (WSSD) Monday. Though Blair and some other delegates were harshly
critical of Mugabe and his seizure of white-owned farms for blacks, the
78-year-old president and his wife, Grace, were cheered and applauded at
all their public appearances. Mugabe said his land reforms had received
wide international support at the summit, except from Europe and the United
States. Several Western countries have branded Mugabe's victory in March
presidential elections illegitimate and have imposed sanctions on him and
his close associates, including his wife. Police have charged more than
300 white farmers for defying an August 8 government deadline for 2,900
of the remaining 4,500 white commercial farmers to quit their land without
compensation. Mugabe, who has been in power since independence from Britain
in 1980, says his land drive is aimed at correcting colonial injustice,
which left 70 percent of the country's best land in the hands of white
farmers. Zimbabwe has been in crisis since pro-government militants led
by veterans of the 1970s liberation war began invading white-owned farms
in early 2000. Aid agencies say nearly half the country's 13 million people
need food aid this year, part of a wider food crisis in six drought-stricken
southern African countries.
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