The Zimbabwe government has accused Britain of pressuring members of the royal family to step into a political dispute between Harare and London, a state-controlled newspaper said in Harare on Saturday.
Zimbabwe’s foreign minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi told a news conference in the capital Harare on Friday it was ”regrettable” that Prince Charles had made an ”unhelpful intervention” over Zimbabwe when he addressed a meeting at the United Nations this week.
”This is most regrettable. We can only assume that the British government, in its desperation, has exerted pressure on a number of people in the British royal family leading to this unfortunate and unhelpful intervention,” Mumbengegwi said.
Earlier this week the heir to the British throne referenced Zimbabwe in a speech in New York to mark the 60th anniversary of the United Nations.
Prince Charles hailed the work of the UN since the end of World War II and wondered ”what extra role the United Nations might be able to play with regard to a country, for instance, like Zimbabwe… which is now undergoing such a traumatic experience”.
Zimbabwe is undergoing its worst economic crisis since independence in 1980.
Inflation is close to 360%, and aid agencies say a quarter of the country’s 12-million people will need food aid by early next year.
Critics blame the policies of President Robert Mugabe. His government started seizing white-owned farms five years ago, causing agricultural production to plummet. The country’s economy has been in crisis ever since, with acute shortages of foreign currency needed to import fuel, power and medicines.
The Zimbabwe government claims its troubles are due to drought and sanctions slapped on its leaders by Britain and other Western countries.
At Friday’s press conference, Mumbengegwi castigated Britain for trying to use the UN to ”internationalise” what he said was merely a bilateral dispute between Harare and its former colonial power.
”Britain has continued to press the UN system to internationalise London’s dispute with Harare and to have the UN Secretary-General issue critical and condemnatory statements on Zimbabwe,” Mumbengegwi said.
Zimbabwe says Britain wants to get her former colony on the agenda of the UN security council.
In a statement this week UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan expressed concern that tens of thousands of Zimbabweans made homeless by a controversial urban clearance campaign launched earlier this year were still living without shelter. – Sapa-DPA