London | Tuesday
ZIMBABWES main opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai urged Britain not to turn its back on its troubled former colony during a meeting with new Foreign Secretary Jack Straw on Monday.
Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), met Straw at the Foreign Office for the first time since Straw replaced Robin Cook last month.
He used the occasion to urge the government to continue keeping a close eye on Zimbabwe, a country blighted by violence since President Robert Mugabe introduced a controversial land reform scheme last year.
A Foreign Office representative said: “Tsvangirai appealed to the world to continue to focus its attention on what is happening in Zimbabwe.
“He stressed it was not only important for Zimbabwe but for the international community as a whole.
“He urged Britain to keep a close eye on what is happening in Zimbabwe.”
The representative said Tsvangirai recognised that Britain was very “engaged” in Zimbabwe, due to historical ties, and pleaded with the government not to desert the country now.
Tsvangirai, who also met junior foreign minister Valerie Amos, responsible for Africa, requested the meeting with Straw as part of an international tour.
Last weekend the opposition leader was in Washington and later this week he will travel to Strasbourg where he will meet representatives from the European Union. Straw and Tsvangirai, 48, also discussed the “situation on the ground” in Zimbabwe.
“They were very interested to hear his assessment of the situation. He is the leader of the opposition so his assessment needs to be seen in that light,” the representative added.
Mugabe’s government last week listed another 1_453 farms it plans to seize as part of the controversial land reform scheme.
This follows another list published one week ago of 577 farms, for a total of 2_030 farms listed in the last eight days. Zimbabwe has a total of about 5_500 commercial farms.
The government plans to take the mostly white-owned farms and resettle them with poor black farmers in a bid to redress colonial-era inequalities in land ownership.
Mugabe’s land reforms have been heavily tied to political violence against Tsvangirai’s MDC, which has posed the most serious challenge ever to his 21-year rule. – AFP
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