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Zim pooh-poohs PAP
13/05/2007 21:40 - (SA)
Angus Shaw
Harare - The government "has the right" to block entry to Zimbabwe of a fact-finding mission of the Pan-African Parliament, a lawmaker said, according to the state Sunday Mail newspaper.
Members of the continent wide parliamentary body agreed at a meeting in neighbouring South Africa last week to investigate conditions of political and economic turmoil by sending African legislators to the country, the paper said.
But Zimbabwe lawmaker Joram Gumbo, who represented the ruling Zanu-PF party at the meeting, described the organisation as "a noisemaking body" with no legislative powers.
Ruling party views were overwhelmed at the meeting by biased lobbying by the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change and other groups, Gumbo told the paper.
The Pan-African Parliament, a largely symbolic body of the African Union, was required to inform the government of its intention to send a delegation and "the government still has the right to bar the mission," Gumbo said.
In the past, the government has repeatedly turned away similar delegations. Several international labour groups invited by Zimbabwe's main opposition-aligned labour federation have been barred entry at the main Harare airport and sent home on the next available flights.
The state media, meanwhile, applauded Zimbabwe's election to head the UN Commission on Sustainable Development for the next year.
Developing countries had dismissed the "ranting and raving" of Western nations over the country's own economic crisis and alleged abuses of democratic and human rights in Zimbabwe, The Sunday Mail said.
State radio said despite "economic challenges" at home, Zimbabwe was expected to take a leading role in promoting sustainable development worldwide for the next year, contributing its skills and expertise through new commission head Francis Nhema, the Zimbabwe tourism minister, and other Zimbabwean officials of calibre.
Zimbabwe has the world's fastest shrinking economy outside a war zone, according to the International Monetary Fund.
Inflation is running at 2 200%, the highest in the world, and the nation, once a regional breadbasket, faces acute shortages of food, hard currency, gasoline and most basic goods.
President Robert Mugabe blames Western economic sanctions and drought for the economic meltdown.
Britain, the European Union and the United States deny imposing blanket sanctions, arguing they have only targeted Mugabe and political leaders through restrictions on travel to their countries and foreign-held assets.
In a paper published in The Sunday Mail, central bank governor Gideon Gono acknowledged foreign investors shied away from Zimbabwe because of "perceived risk" after the often violent seizures of thousands of white-owned farms without market-linked compensation began in 2000.
- SAPA
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