Britain and the United States urged Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Monday to allow international monitors to ensure a free and fair run-off election in the Southern African country.
Referring to what he called Mugabe’s ”increasingly desperate and criminal regime”, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Mugabe should not be allowed to ”steal the election”.
Zimbabwe holds a run-off presidential vote on June 27 and the opposition and rights groups accuse Mugabe’s supporters of a campaign of violence to try to ensure he keeps his 28-year hold on power in a country suffering economic collapse.
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai won the first poll in March but without enough votes for an outright victory, official results show.
”In recent weeks, under Robert Mugabe’s increasingly desperate and criminal regime, Zimbabwe has seen 53 killings, 2 000 beatings, the displacement of 30 000 people, the arrest and detention of opposition leaders including Morgan Tsvangirai,” Brown told a joint news conference after talks with US President George Bush.
”This is wholly unacceptable. Mugabe must not be allowed to steal the election.”
”We call for Zimbabwe to accept a United Nations human rights envoy to visit Zimbabwe now and to accept international monitors from all parts of the world who are available to ensure that this is a free and fair election,” Brown said.
A senior UN envoy, Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs Haile Menkerios, arrives in Zimbabwe later on Monday for a five-day visit to assess Zimbabwe’s political and humanitarian crisis ahead of the run-off vote.
Observers from Western countries critical of Mugabe, such as former colonial power Britain, were barred from the first round ballot on March 29 and are not being allowed in for the run-off. The African Union and Southern African Development Community will send teams.
Arrests
Bush offered his support to Brown’s call.
”We will work with you to ensure these good folks have free and fair elections to the best extent possible, which obviously Mr Mugabe does not want to have,” he said.
Mugabe (84) is fighting to keep power that he has held since independence from Britain in 1980. His Zanu-PF lost control of Parliament in the March 29 election.
Tsvangirai has been detained repeatedly during the campaign and one of his top lieutenants has been arrested and faces treason charges. The MDC says 66 people have been killed by Mugabe’s supporters. Mugabe blames his foes for violence.
Critics say the economy has been ruined by Mugabe’s policies, such as seizing white-owned farms to give to landless black Zimbabweans. He says Western sanctions are responsible.
Zimbabwe’s once-prosperous economy has collapsed, with official inflation running at 165 000%, unemployment at about 80% and food and fuel in short supply. Millions of Zimbabweans have sought work abroad, most heading to South Africa, where their presence has stoked social tensions.
Zimbabwe ordered aid agencies to stop work on June 4, accusing them of working against his Zanu-PF party.
”Food aid is needed and the government is focusing on that. That is a need the NGOs exploited, saying ‘we are feeding you, so do not vote for Zanu-PF, vote for the MDC’,” Mugabe said in a campaign rally on Sunday, state media reported.
”So we suspended them and are investigating their operations.” — Reuters