OWN CORRESPONDENT and AFP, New York | Wednesday
SOUTHERN African foreign ministers have expressed deep opposition to proposed US legislation to impose sanctions on Zimbabwe if democratic reforms and changes to a controversial land reform program are not implemented.
In a meeting here with US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the foreign ministers from the 14 members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) said the bill would not achieve its aim and that it sought to impose an American solution to Zimbabwe’s problems.
The Zimbabwe 2000 Democracy Bill would bar aid and debt relief and instruct US executive directors of multinational lending institutions to oppose credits to Harare unless the situation there improved.
“Several ministers spoke out on the reasons they opposed the bill, saying they thought it would be counterproductive to the cause of democracy in Zimbabwe,” a senior State Department official said after the meeting.
Albright told the ministers that while the legislation, which passed the Senate in June and is now being considered by the House of Representatives, was not sponsored by President Bill Clinton’s administration, the White House and State Department shared its aim.
“We share the goals of the bill to support democracy and consensual land reform in Zimbabwe,” the official said, adding that Albright did, however, express some reservations about the sanctions the law could impose.
“We are not keen on the issue of sanctions and we would have to consider their views and consider our position as we try to work with Congress on this bill,” the official said.
Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe has come under intense fire for his land reform program in which the government is seizing white-owned farms and distributing the property to landless blacks.
In a statement released after a meeting in Namibia in August, the 14 SADC heads of state vowed to fight the Zimbabwe 2000 Democracy legislation, calling it “punitive,” “counterproductive” and “unjust.”