HARARE | Monday
ZIMBABWEAN President Robert Mugabe says the International Monetary Fund must be reformed to force it to support developing countries regardless of their political or rights records, the state-owned Herald said on Monday.
Mugabe said that unlike the UN, where all members have an equal voice, the IMF is being used by powerful western nations to deprive some developing countries of much-needed assistance on political grounds.
“If a country needs balance of payments support, for example, that question must not invoke whether human rights have been violated or not,” he told the paper.
Mugabe, who returned home Monday from a G-15 summit in Indonesia, said in the interview the IMF lending criteria should rather be determined by “proper utilisation of the funds”.
“No political considerations should be taken into account,” stressed Mugabe, whose own country has been reeling under the suspension of IMF loans since 1999.
He said he wanted to see the IMF “democratised” to give an “equal voice” to African nations because currently the IMF is “dominated by western countries, principally the United States”.
Starved of IMF support, the Zimbabwean economy has in the past two years been in free-fall, with foreign exchange critically short, and inflation and unemployment hovering at over 50 percent.
Mugabe’s comments come two weeks after an unprecedented attack on the 78-year-old former guerrilla leader by US Secretary of State Colin Powell, accusing him of clinging to power since the country’s independence from Britain in 1980.
Powell who made the statement during a trip to South Africa, said the US was “pressing for responsible political acts on the part of Mr Mugabe to avoid the kind of crisis that is slowly developing”.
The country has in the past year seen violent occupations of white-owned farms, followed by the invasion of mainly white-owned businesses, leaving analysts to conclude that the rule of law has fallen by the wayside.
Mugabe faces presidential elections next year which his opponents are predicting will mirror the violent run up to last year’s parliamentary elections, in which 34 people died. – AFP