'It was a mistake'
28/09/2004 10:27  - (SA)  

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London - British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has said he shook hands with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe in New York last week "by mistake" and because it was "dark", Britain's press reported on Tuesday.

The handshake, filmed by BBC's Newsnight in a programme shown on Monday, has led to condemnation from Zimbabwe's main opposition party and ridicule in Britain, by whom Mugabe is regularly slammed for flagrant rights abuses.

"Handshake that shames Britain," said the incredulous Daily Mail, which printed a picture of it on its front page.

The Independent newspaper reported that Straw had said after the incident: "I hadn't expected to see President Mugabe there."

"Because it was quite dark in that corner; I was being pushed towards shaking hands with somebody just as a matter of courtesy and then it transpired it was President Mugabe," he reportedly said.

According to the Independent, Straw then defended his actions by saying: "The fact that there is a serious disagreement between Zimbabwe and the United Kingdom does not mean that you should then be discourteous or rude."

An official of the Zimbabwean opposition Movement for Democratic Change told the Independent: "Whatever the circumstances, it sends the wrong message to see the British foreign secretary shaking hands with President Mugabe."

Zimbabwe has been beset for years by a massive economic and political crisis, blamed partly on Mugabe's controversial policy of land redistribution that has helped transform what was once Africa's breadbasket into a land of recurring food shortages.

Mugabe, who helped lead Zimbabwe to independence from Britain in 1980 and has remained in power ever since, won another term in March 2002. The EU and the United States then hit the country with sanctions - while the Commonwealth suspended Zimbabwe from its ruling councils.

Last December, after the Commonwealth again refused to reinstate the country Zimbabwe pulled out of the club of mainly former British colonies altogether.

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