Mugabe puts troops on permanent alert

Mugabe puts troops on permanent alert

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By Agencies

PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe on Tuesday said military spending will always be a priority to ensure that Zimbabwe's forces are able to confront "imperialistic efforts to destabilise the nation".

"We should always maintain a high level of preparedness in order to safeguard our national sovereignty and territorial integrity," Mugabe said in a speech to mark the 24th anniversary of the creation of Zimbabwe's defence forces.

"We should ... remain vigilant and wary of increasingly desperate and dangerous imperialistic efforts to destabilise our nation," he said.

"Government will always continue to give priority to the defence forces training and equipment programme in order to ensure the existence of a credible defence system capable of defending the gains of our hard-won independence."

The Zimbabwean military was active in the Democratic Republic of Congo where Mugabe deployed more than 10 000 troops to shore up government forces of assassinated leader Laurent Kabila and then his son, Joseph, from 1998 to 2002.

In June, Zimbabwe's Parliament was told that the Defence Ministry had bought 12 fighter jets and 100 military vehicles from China, at an estimated cost of about $200-million.

Zimbabwe has been grappling with runaway inflation of just less than 400%, 70% unemployment and capital flight since Mugabe launched a controversial land-reform programme that saw thousands of white-owned farms seized and redistributed to landless farmers. -- Sapa-AFP
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