British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Britain would urge the European Union to impose tougher sanctions on Zimbabwe, describing the situation there as ”appalling, disgraceful and utterly tragic”.
”We will press the EU to widen the political sanctions that were introduced in 2002 and introduced very much as a result of our prompting at the time,” Blair told Parliament during his weekly question-and-answer session.
”That assets freeze and travel ban we will seek to extend as far as we can.”
Blair echoed Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett’s view that, in the light of growing concern at violence towards opposition groups, action was needed from the United Nations Security Council and the UN Human Rights Commission.
”We will be urging partners in both those institutions to come out with strong statements against what is happening in Zimbabwe, which is appalling, disgraceful and utterly tragic for the people of Zimbabwe,” he told lawmakers.
Belgium on Tuesday admitted that a visa was issued by mistake to a close aide of President Robert Mugabe, despite him being on an EU blacklist and banned from travelling in the bloc.
Mugabe himself and his entourage are banned from travelling to Europe under EU sanctions on Zimbabwe since 2002 for human rights violations.
Arrests
Meanwhile, ten members of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) were arrested on Wednesday after staging a sit-in protest at the Zimbabwean embassy in London, the Metropolitan Police said.
”There have been a total of 10 arrests for trespass on a diplomatic premises: seven men and three women,” a spokesperson said.
Regular police and officers from the Metropolitan Police’s diplomatic protection team were called to the embassy on the Strand, near Trafalgar Square in central London, at about 9am local time after the 10 got inside the building.
An MDC-United Kingdom spokesperson, Ephraim Tapa, told Agence France-Presse the protest was part of a regular series of demonstrations and vigils outside the embassy at President Robert Mugabe’s repression of opposition in Zimbabwe. — Sapa-AFP