The Zimbabwe government on Tuesday shrugged off the EU’s decision to extend sanctions against senior officials and ruling party members, including President Robert Mugabe’s wife, a state-run paper said.
”The European Union has not extended anything. They have just repeated their hostility towards the Zimbabwean government,” a senior foreign affairs official told the Herald newspaper.
On Monday an EU council of foreign ministers added the names of 52 Mugabe associates, including that of Mugabe’s wife Grace, to a blacklist of officials facing ”targetted sanctions”.
The council cited the Zimbabwe government’s alleged abuse of human rights, democracy and the rule of law for the sanctions, which bar individuals from obtaining visas to travel to EU member states and freeze any assets they may have in the eurozone.
But an editorial in the Herald on Tuesday dismissed the EU’s move as a ”vain hope that this will create discontent within the Government.”
Tendai Biti, shadow foreign affairs minister in the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), said the government should accept the EU’s move as a challenge to restore ”legitimacy” to the country.
”The gauntlet has been cast on the ground,” said Biti. ”They (the government) must return this country to legitimacy” through a new constitution and fresh presidential elections, he said.
The MDC has rejected the outcome of March presidential elections, which saw Mugabe returned to power. – AFP
