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Britain 'failing to isolate Zim'
05/12/2007 08:45 - (SA)
Harare - President Robert Mugabe said on Tuesday British efforts to isolate Zimbabwe were crumbling after London failed to have him excluded from an European Union-Africa summit.
Mugabe, who had ruled Zimbabwe for nearly three decades since independence, would attend the Lisbon summit on December 08-09. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown planned to boycott the meeting in protest over Mugabe's record on human rights and the economy.
Mugabe said: "The sinister campaign led by Britain to isolate us, indeed in the recent attempt to bar us from attending the EU-Africa summit soon to be hosted by Portugal, continues to disintegrate.
"I wish to thank the EU and African countries for their support and the Portuguese government who are hosting the summit for their correct reading of the situation." Western governments accused Mugabe of gross human rights violations and ruining Zimbabwe's once prosperous economy.
Travel, financial sanctions
The United States said on Monday it would impose financial and travel sanctions on about 40 more people with ties to his government.
Mugabe said the further travel and financial sanctions planned by the US were vindictive and driven by hatred of his government.
Washington had already imposed sanctions on about 130 people with links to Mugabe, and the plan was to expand that list by placing financial restrictions on about half a dozen more people and US travel bans on an additional three dozen.
According to Mugabe: "Well, they are obviously sanctions that have no rationality and sanctions that are vindictive.
"So you just have to look at them in that light, that the Americans have no cause. Their cause is just hatred, hatred of us and I would like to believe that there is some racialism in it also."
Attempts to hold summit 'failed'
While Western powers had tried to isolate Mugabe, many Africans saw the 83-year-old as a hero of the independence struggle who was still resisting Anglo-American hegemony.
For the past seven years all attempts to hold the EU-Africa summit had failed because Britain and its allies sought to exclude Mugabe and African leaders would not come without him.
Mugabe accused his Western foes of sabotaging the country's economy in retaliation for his seizure of white-owned commercial farms for blacks.
He thanked the Southern African Development Community (SADC) for backing Harare and for initiating talks between his government and the opposition.
"We are deeply indebted to our brothers and sisters in SADC for their solidarity with us in the face of sustained manipulation and arm-twisting manoeuvres cunningly being spearheaded by Britain," said Mugabe.
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